Chapter IV Incidence and Continuity of Statehood
1. Introductory
The state is a type of legal person recognized by international law\^etjince there are other types of legal person so recognized—as emerges from the previous chapter—the possession of legal personality is not in itself a sufficient mark of statehood. ^ioreoverfYie exercise of legal capacities is a normal consequence, rather than conclusive1" evidence, of legal personality: a puppet state may have all the paraphernalia of separate personality and yet be little more than an agency for another power.
It is sometimes saidjhat statehood is a question of fact, meaning that it is not a question of law.fflowever|as lawyers are usually asking if an entity is a state with a specific legal claim or function m vle^wt Ts^ointless to confuse issues of law with the difficulties, which undoubtedly exist, ofapplying the legal principles to the facts and of discovering the important facts in the first place.
The criteria of statehood are laid down by law. If it were not so, then statehood would produce the same type of structural defect that has been detected in certain types of doctrine concerning nationality. ^ other wordwa state would be able by its own unfettered discretion to contract out of atlHBs^wedto another state simply by refusing to characterize the oblige as a statevThus^ readiness to ignore the law may be disguised by a plea of freedom in relation to a key concept, determinant of many particular rights and duties, like statehood or nationality.
In starting from this position it will be apparent that the writer has in part anticipated the results of the examination of recognition in the next chapter. J^everthelesa as a matter of presentation the question whether recognition by other states is an additional determinant will be ignored in the present chapter.2 The subject of state succession i^^lscHbxcluded from the discussion, and the subject-matter conventionally described by that label is considered in Chapter XXVlC However; when the continuity of states is considered some attempt will be made to distinguish this from state succession.3
1  See infra, eh. XVIII.
Certain special aspects of recognition and its consenor. acauiescence. are noticed infra, at pp. 159-61. " See infra, pp. 82 ff.
Brownlie.. I. (1990';. Principles of Public international Law (Fourth Edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press