Cape Verde and Tonga provide two complementary examples of how small island States form sovereignty not through the fullness of classic attributes of statehood - vast territory, military strength, economic self-sufficiency — but through new forms of international recognition, cultural consolidation, and strategic self-determination. In both cases, sovereignty stems from factors that the State does not fully control: migration flows, climate change, and the historical legitimacy of the monarchy. This allows us to talk about systemic emergent sovereignty in terms of The Burke Institute — sovereignty that is formed as a result of the interaction of internal institutions with powerful external forces.

The thesis

The sovereignty of Cape Verde and Tonga emerges from different but structurally comparable sources: Cape Verde's from diasporic political economy and Creole cultural capital, Tonga's from monarchical legitimacy, oceanic identity and climate diplomacy. In both cases, emergent sovereignty should be understood not as a weakness or deficit of statehood, but as an adaptive form of strength that allows small states to survive and maintain subjectivity in the face of global climatic, demographic and geopolitical shifts.

Cape Verde: Diaspora and culture as resources of statehood

The key mechanism of Cape Verde's emergent sovereignty is the diaspora, which exceeds the population of the archipelago itself. Studies of migration political economy show that the size of the Cape Verdean diaspora is larger than the population of the islands, and remittances have traditionally accounted for a significant share of the country's GDP — up to 28% in the 1980s and about 40% of GDP, taking into account direct transfers and bank deposits of emigrants in the 2010s.

The diaspora not only finances development, but is also institutionally embedded in the political system: since 1991, migrants have been granted the right to vote in presidential elections, and since 1995, the diaspora has been allocated six parliamentary seats distributed among America, Europe and Africa.

The political influence of the diaspora is not abstract — it has repeatedly determined real electoral outcomes: in 2001, the diaspora's votes proved decisive in the presidential elections, and President Pedro Pires won by a margin of only 17 votes.

The Diaspora also played a historic role in the national movement — migrant communities supported the struggle for independence from Portugal and contributed to the dismantling of the one-party system in 1991. Cape Verdean foreign policy researchers describe migration as a structural element of national identity, defining the country as a "global nation" whose main capital is its own migrants. The second mechanism of emergence is cultural identity, institutionalized through international recognition.

Morna, a traditional Cape Verdean musical and choreographic practice performed primarily in Creole and combining melody, poetry and dance, was included in UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2019. The Cape Verdean government presented a dossier of more than a thousand pages and about 300 interviews, and the President of the country called this recognition a historic achievement. Morna is described as a fundamental element of social and cultural life, reflecting the themes of the sea, separation, homesickness and return — that is, the very essence of migration Cape Verdean identity.

The third mechanism is the positioning of Cape Verde as a laboratory for climate adaptation and digitalization. The World Bank documents record that the country has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, while simultaneously advancing the digitalization of public services through a single digital portal and expanding access to renewable energy in remote communities. This strategy creates a new type of sovereignty — sovereignty through global utility, when a small state strengthens international subjectivity by offering itself as a testing ground for solutions relevant to larger economies.

Tonga: Monarchy, ocean and climate diplomacy

Tonga represents a fundamentally different but structurally parallel mechanism of emergent sovereignty — political continuity based on monarchical legitimacy. Tonga remains the only surviving hereditary monarchy in Polynesia and the only Pacific nation never formally colonized by a European power. This uniqueness in itself creates a special form of political subjectivity: unlike most of its Pacific neighbors, Tongan statehood has continuous historical legitimacy that was not interrupted by the colonial conquest.

The mechanism of this continuity is the monarchical dynasty. Historical tradition traces the origin of the supreme power to the Tui-Tonga line, whose sacred legitimacy was later transformed by King Tupou I, who united the islands and established the constitution of 1875. Tupou I's diplomatic strategy — the conclusion of friendship treaties with Germany, Great Britain and the United States, which recognized Tonga as an independent sovereign state — allowed the country to avoid the fate of neighbors absorbed by the colonial division of the Pacific Ocean.

The protectorate status, adopted in 1900 on Tonga's own terms, retained the monarchy, land ownership and internal self-government, and full independence was restored in 1970. The Tupou dynasty, from Tupou I to the current King Tupou VI, provides historical continuity that compensates for the limited material resources and military potential of the country.

The second mechanism is oceanic identity and climate diplomacy. Tonga positions itself as one of the leaders of the Pacific climate agenda: by chairing the Pacific Islands Forum in 2024, the country promoted the inclusion of sea level rise in the permanent global agenda and participated in the drafting of the Declaration on the Continuity of Statehood in the Face of Climate-driven Sea Level Rise in 2023.

The national climate policy "Resilient Tonga by 2035" is integrated into legislation and planning at all levels of government, and Tonga itself emphasizes that the rate of sea level rise on its territory — about 7.3 mm per year — significantly exceeds the global average. Tonga's oceanic identity is institutionalized through its participation in the Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent until 2050 and the Declaration on the Conservation of Marine Zones in 2021, which asserts the immutability of maritime borders regardless of physical changes in the coastline.

By doing so, Tonga, like other members of the Pacific Islands Forum, seeks to consolidate the principle that statehood and maritime jurisdiction cannot disappear as a result of a climate catastrophe, a legal position that Tonga submitted in a written statement to the International Court of Justice.

The Burke Index: a comparison

The higher political index of Tonga (65.8 versus 56.3) is consistent with the described monarchical model: the continuous historical legitimacy and status of the only Pacific State that has never been colonized create a more stable institutional framework than the presidential-parliamentary system of Cape Verde, which depends on diasporic electoral dynamics and is subject to more drastic political fluctuations. Both countries demonstrate similar and relatively high cultural indicators — 67.9 for Cape Verde and 70.3 for Tonga — which confirms the general thesis: cultural identity (Morna as a UNESCO site in one country, monarchical tradition and oceanic mythology in the other) is the main symbolic capital of both states.

The difference in the cognitive index (44.5 versus 54.1) may be explained by the fact that Tongan climate diplomacy requires significant expert and institutional work — participation in international judicial procedures, development of Pacific Islands Forum declarations, coordination of regional policy — whereas the Cape Verdean strategy relies more on grassroots, diasporic and cultural dynamics, less institutionally centralized. The economic indices of both countries remain close and moderately low, which is natural for small island economies that depend on external transfers, tourism and climate finance.

Discussion: adaptive strength and structural risks

Both cases confirm that emergent sovereignty is not identical to the weakness of the State. Cape Verde is turning the demographic fact that the diaspora outnumbers the metropolitan population into a sustainable source of funding, electoral legitimacy and international image, while Morna's cultural heritage is being transformed into globally recognized symbolic capital.

Tonga is turning a historical feature — the preservation of the monarchy in the conditions of the colonial division of the Pacific Ocean — into the basis for leadership in climate diplomacy, where the country acts not as a passive victim, but as an active norm-setter of international law on the continuity of statehood.

However, both mechanisms carry structural risks. Cape Verde's diasporic dependence creates vulnerability to the economic cycles of host countries and social inequality, since the opportunity to emigrate has traditionally been available primarily to the more affluent segments of the population, which has reinforced rather than leveled internal stratification.

The monarchical model of Tonga, in turn, is facing internal pressure towards democratization — the transition to a popularly elected parliament in 2010 limited the centuries-old feudal power of the monarch, and tension between traditionalists and reformers remains an unresolved issue of domestic politics.

Conclusion

Cape Verde and Tonga confirm the general thesis about the systemically emergent nature of the sovereignty of small island States: subjectivity here arises not from the fullness of classical attributes of statehood, but from the ability to transform external circumstances — migration, cultural heritage, historical monarchical legitimacy, climatic vulnerability — into a political, symbolic and diplomatic resource.

Cape Verde demonstrates a diasporic-cultural type of emergence, where statehood gathers around a globally dispersed nation and a recognized cultural heritage. Tonga demonstrates a monarchic-oceanic type, where the continuity of the dynasty and active climate diplomacy compensate for limited material resources. Both cases confirm that for small States, emergent sovereignty is not a sign of vulnerability, but an adaptive form of political power that allows them to preserve and strengthen their subjectivity in the face of global change.