Constitutive theory of statehood

Okay kiddo, you know how each country has its own rules that everyone who lives there has to follow? Well, there's something called the constitutive theory of statehood that helps determine what makes a country a country.

Think of it like a recipe for making a cake. Just like how you need certain ingredients to make a cake (like flour, sugar, eggs, and milk), a country needs certain things to be considered a country. With the constitutive theory, we look at two things specifically to determine if a place is a country: recognition from other countries and a defined territory.

Recognition means that other countries agree that the place is its own country. Kind of like how your friends have to agree that the cake you made is a cake. And the defined territory means that the country has borders that are established and recognized, like how the cake has a specific shape and size.

So when we say a place is a country, we mean that it has been recognized by other countries and has a defined territory. Just like how a cake is only a cake if it has all the right ingredients and is baked correctly, a country is only a country if it has recognition and a defined territory. Pretty cool, right?