Defeats on the road to freedom - factors on the road to derecognition from a QCA perspective.

The aim of the overall project this paper is linked to is to contribute to theory-building concerning the derecognition of statehood, for instance, affecting the reality of former secessionist entities like Kosovo. A multimethod research design is applied to accomplish this aim and spread light on factors contributing to derecognition. It will combine a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) with an in-depth case study of selected cases. This paper will contribute to theoretical and methodological debates, linking the literature on secession, recognition and derecognition of statehood in International Relations (IR) and related fields like International Law and International Sociology with the methodological debates concerning QCA. It will address the research question to what extent a set-theoretic approach based on the combination of different conditions is valuable to illustrate various factors contributing to acts of derecognition. While doing so, the paper will examine the potentials and challenges linked to this approach. As a result, insights on the currently highly understudied decline of secessionist states and contested entities in their role within the international community are provided. In doing so, this paper will discuss five superordinate conditions and their construction in a detailed and critical manner. For each of the conditions, the paper will address the different factors included, the characteristics of the condition (e.g. crisp vs fuzzy sets, aggregated or not aggregated), the individual membership scores of each condition and potential examples. Furthermore, it will address open questions not covered by these categories highlighting borderline aspects contributing to the derecognition of secessionists like Kosovo. The five conditions discussed in detail in this paper are a) lack of statehood criteria, b) lack of international support, c) international consensus, d) lack of international legitimacy, and e) an active parent state.