24 Alexander and SIMON change of government.17 The principle does not touch on the issue of whether some entity is a state as such; it speaks only to the issue of whether a currently established state is continuous with a past state, or whether instead it is a new state. The principle accordingly does not come into conflict with the established principle of international law asserting that states, as such, must possess habitable territory. By analogy, suppose there was a principle stating a presumption in favour of the continued existence of city parks. Such a principle might mandate that if the park is sold to a private corporation, which changes the park’s location or shrinks its size in order to build condos, the park nevertheless remains in existence. But this principle would not imply that if the park ceased to have any open green space at all, it would still be a park. A city park must first meet the independent criteria for being a park in order for a principle of presumption of continuity to apply. Second of all, the principle of presumption of continuity is naturally construed as a constraint on the grounds of which states should recognise a current state as being continuous with a past state and so as inheriting all of its privileges and duties.18 But even if the principle spoke to the matter of recognition of statehood as such, rather than to the matter of recognition of sameness of state, which as we have just seen is a distinct matter, this still would not be enough to establish that non-territorial entities could be states. Some doubt that recognition plays a constitutive role in determining statehood at all,19 but even those who take recognition to play a constitutive role generally do not hold that it is constitutively sufficient for an entity to be a state; they only hold that it is necessary.20 If recognition were constitutively sufficient for statehood, then if the community of nations, for whatever reason, decided to recognise a boiled egg as a state, then that boiled egg would be a state. But this is absurd. It follows that no amount of recognition extended to some entity could guarantee that that entity were in fact a state. In particular, it would not follow that those entities were states in the sense of the 1954 Convention. This means that 17 18 19 20 See generally Marek (n. 8) for a discussion of the continuation of statehood in the classic sense, involving, for example, secession, occupation and revolution. See also Shaw (n. 9) 178; Stoutenburg (n. 5). Marek (n. 8) 5, 141-143. See also Montevideo Convention, art. 3. Crawford (n. 9) 7-9, 27, 98; Brownlie (n. 9) 87; Shaw (n. 9) 186. Marek, (n. 8) 142. For the opposing view, see McAdam, Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law (n. 1) 138. It may be difficult to obtain recognition by the international community for a ‘state’ that has no territory, as other states may wish to avoid setting a precedent that could help to legitimize non-state actors. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 20-25