6 Succession of State and Government

The distinction to keep clean (the examination's recurring trap):state succession changes the international person in territory; government succession changes only the government — thestate continues, bound by all its obligations (continuity of identity: Napoleon's fall did not free France of treaties; the Russian Federation succeeded the USSR as a continuing state (not a new one — the "continuator" practice); Nepal's governments succeed one another seamlessly in international law (Unit 3's paragraph)). The grey cases: revolution's completeness (Iran 1979 — continuity held), state dissolution (Czechoslovakia's agreed dissolution 1993 — both successors "new" the USSR's Russia-as-continuator contrast; Yugoslavia's contested identity — the FRY's claim to continuation rejected by the Badinter Opinions, UN practice treating it as a new state requiring application (2000's admission)).Succession to treaties (the VCSST 1978 / VCSSP 1983 architecture): boundary and territorial regimes survive (uti possidetis's cousin); multilateral codifying conventions continue; political/dispositive treaties lapse; newly independent states get the clean-slate option; notification of succession as the mechanism. Succession to property, archives and debts: the territory's equitable share; debts' odiousness doctrine (the successor's refusal of debts contracted against the population's interest — the doctrine's modern renaissance: Iraq's Saddam-era debts debate).