Recognition by design: Territorial legibility and the stratification of sovereign opportunity after empire

This article argues that the postcolonial international order is stratified not only by material power but also by inherited classificatory position. I introduce the concepts of territorial legibility and recognition by design to explain why some colonially governed territories remain visible as plausible candidates for sovereign statehood while others are stabilized as internalized territories or security problems. It establishes the comparative pattern and its consequences for sovereign opportunity. Using a global mapping of non-self-governing and analogous territories since 1945, combined with paired process tracing of East Timor and Kashmir, I show that decolonization exit templates sort territories into unequal positions within a hierarchy of legibility. These positions structure access to international forums, trusteeship mechanisms, and status resolution scripts, thereby conditioning how geopolitical power operates across cases. High-legibility territories retain institutional pathways to referendums and supervised transitions, whereas low-legibility territories confront narrower repertoires centered on bilateral containment and domestic security. Decolonization thus produced an unequal distribution of sovereign opportunity that continues to shape postcolonial political futures.