De facto states have moved from a periphery to the center of academic
attention during the last two decades. The objective of the paper is an
identification of characteristic development trends within a set of these
non-state territorial political units, and it investigates the relation between
the degree of their internal sovereignty and their level of partial
international recognition. The quantitative method for assessment of the
degree of internal sovereignty is based on a set of seven indicators and an
aggregate “indicator of internal sovereignty”. The set of de facto states is
composed of 26 entities whose development is analyzed from 2001 to 2018.
The results confirmed a relationship between the development of world
politics and the development trends within the set of de facto states, a
significant influence of partial international recognition on the level of
internal sovereignty, and a close relation between security and political
indicators of sovereignty
