Editing Sovereignty (section)

===''De jure'' and ''de facto''===
''[[De jure]]'', or legal, sovereignty concerns the expressed and institutionally recognised right to exercise control over a territory. ''[[De facto]]'' sovereignty means sovereignty [[De facto#Government and culture|exists in practice]], irrespective of anything  legally accepted as such, usually in writing. Cooperation and respect of the populace; control of resources in, or moved into, an area; means of enforcement and security; and ability to carry out various functions of state all represent measures of ''de facto'' sovereignty. When control is practiced predominantly by the military or police force it is considered ''coercive sovereignty''.

====Sovereignty and independence====
{{more citations needed section|date=July 2015}}
State sovereignty is sometimes viewed synonymously with [[independence]], however, sovereignty can be transferred as a legal right whereas independence cannot.<ref name="talmon"/> A state can achieve ''de facto'' independence long after acquiring sovereignty, such as in the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.<ref name="talmon"/> Additionally, independence can also be suspended when an entire region becomes subject to an occupation. For example, when [[Iraq]] was overrun by foreign forces in the [[Iraq War of 2003]], Iraq had not been [[annexed]] by any country, so sovereignty over it had not been claimed by any foreign state (despite the [[facts on the ground]]). Alternatively, independence can be lost completely when sovereignty itself becomes the subject of dispute. The pre-World War II administrations of [[Latvia]], [[Lithuania]] and [[Estonia]] maintained an exile existence (and considerable international recognition) whilst their territories were annexed by the [[Soviet Union]] and governed locally by their pro-Soviet functionaries. When in 1991 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia re-enacted independence, it was done so on the basis of continuity directly from the pre-Soviet republics.<ref name="talmon">{{cite book|last=Talmon|first=Stefan|title=Recognition of Governments in International Law|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=scc8EboiJX8C&pg=PA50|series=Oxford Monographs in International Law Series|year=1998|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780198265733|page=50}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Mälksoo|first=Lauri|title=Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR|year=2003|publisher=M. Nijhoff Publishers|isbn=978-9041121776|page=193|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p5w6AQAAIAAJ}}</ref>

Another complicated sovereignty scenario can arise when regime itself is the subject of dispute. In the case of [[Poland]], the [[History of Poland (1945–89)|People's Republic of Poland]] which governed Poland from 1945 to 1989 is now seen to have been an illegal entity by the modern Polish administration. The post-1989 Polish state claims direct continuity from the [[Second Polish Republic]] which ended in 1939. For other reasons, however, Poland maintains its communist-era outline as opposed to its pre-World War II shape which included areas now in [[Belarus]], [[Czech Republic]], [[Lithuania]], [[Slovakia]] and [[Ukraine]] but did not include some of its western regions that were then in [[Germany]].

Additionally sovereignty can be achieved without independence, such as how the [[Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] made the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] a sovereign entity within but not independent from the USSR.

At the opposite end of the scale, there is no dispute regarding the self-governance of certain self-proclaimed states such as the [[Republic of Kosovo]] or [[Somaliland]] (see [[List of states with limited recognition]], but most of them are [[puppet state]]s) since their governments neither answer to a bigger state nor is their governance subjected to supervision. The sovereignty (i.e. legal right to govern) however, is disputed in both cases as the first entity is claimed by [[Serbia]] and the second by [[Somalia]].