Sri Lanka and Madagascar are formally ideal sovereign states according to all the criteria of the Westphalian model: a clearly delineated territory (islands with natural maritime boundaries), permanent population, recognized government, and the ability to enter into international relations.

This is what makes them unique analytical laboratories: any problems of sovereignty here cannot be attributed to border conflicts or territorial claims of neighbors. Their limitations arise from within—from ethnic divisions, political culture, and economic weakness, which turn out to be stronger than geographical advantages. This confirms the following thesis: sovereignty is not a binary category, but a spectrum.

The Westphalian ideality and its trap

The Westphalian system, which developed after 1648, consolidated three pillars of state sovereignty: territorial integrity, recognition by the international community, and a monopoly on legitimate violence within borders. According to the first two criteria, Sri Lanka and Madagascar are exemplary countries. Islands with clear natural borders, members of the United Nations, SAARC, SADC, dozens of international organizations. No one disputes their sovereignty.

This is what makes the third pillar, the monopoly on violence, especially analytically significant. When a state with perfect external borders does not control its own territory, the reason lies solely within. The geographical isolation of the island not only does not protect against these problems, but in a certain sense it exposes them, making it impossible to shift the blame to external factors. That is why the case of both countries is so indicative of the theory of sovereignty.

Sri Lanka: sovereignty through disintegration and restoration

The Civil War as the collapse of the Westphalian Monopoly

From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka fought the largest armed conflict in its history with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At the peak of the war, the rebels controlled a significant part of the northern and eastern provinces of the island — Tamil Eelam as a de facto state with its own administration, courts, taxes and armed forces numbering up to 25-30 thousand people. The state had international recognition, but did not have a monopoly on violence in a significant part of its own territory—exactly what Westphalian theory considers conditio sine qua non sovereignty.

The end of the war came on May 16-19, 2009. President Mahinda Rajapaksa officially announced the military victory over LTTE in Parliament. The leader of the Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed. The State has restored a monopoly on violence throughout the island for the first time in 26 years.

The economic collapse of 2022: sovereignty without resources

The military victory did not solve the structural problems of sovereignty. In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its external debt for the first time in its history. Inflation exceeded 70%, foreign reserves were virtually exhausted, mass protests began, which ended with the flight of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from the country. The state that defeated the separatists lost its ability to provide basic functions and had to turn to the IMF.

The IMF's $3 billion program (Extended Fund Facility, 2023-2027) has become both a lifeline and an institutional constraint on sovereignty. The terms of the program included the reform of the tax base, the independence of the central bank, and energy pricing based on market principles. By 2025, inflation had fallen to negative values, GDP grew by 4.5% in 2024, and reserves exceeded $4.5 billion. In the third quarter of 2025, the economy grew by 5.4%. But the restructuring of $28 billion of foreign debt is still ongoing, and the terms of agreements with creditors continue to limit fiscal autonomy.

Post-conflict sovereignty: unfinished reconciliation

The formal restoration of territorial control did not mean the restoration of political integration. 15 years after the end of the war, the northern and eastern provinces are still a zone of "incomplete sovereignty." The military presence in Tamil areas remains; lands seized during the war have not been returned to their rightful owners.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was elected in 2024, publicly pledged to return the lands and release political prisoners, but by mid-2025 most of the commitments had not been fulfilled. In the local elections, Tamil nationalist parties regained ground in the north and east, reflecting persistent distrust of Colombo.

This illustrates a key paradox: a state can defeat armed separatists, but continue to hold territory by force without achieving real political integration. Sovereignty in this case remains the sovereignty of control, but not the sovereignty of legitimacy.

Madagascar: chronic instability and sovereignty without a State

The policy of coups as a systemic feature

Since gaining independence from France in 1960, Madagascar has experienced a series of coups that have become not exceptions, but a systemic mechanism for the change of power. The crisis of 2009 was one of the most significant: the mayor of the capital, Antriu Rajuellina, overthrew President Ravalomanana with the support of the army. The international community immediately condemned the coup, suspended financing and investments, and the country plunged into one of the worst economic crises in its history.

In October 2025, history repeated itself. 16 years later, Rajuelina himself, who had by then become the legitimately elected president, was overthrown in a new coup. The Gen Z Madagascar youth movement, which has risen up against chronic shortages of electricity and water, corruption and poverty, has received the support of the elite military unit CAPSAT, the same one that helped Rajuellina come to power in 2009. The president escaped aboard a French military plane. The Constitution has been suspended; The military announced the creation of a transitional council and the holding of a referendum within two years.

The architecture of this event is remarkable: at the time of the president's flight, a French military aircraft turned out to be a logistical means of his evacuation. This eloquently illustrates the depth of the country's postcolonial dependence on the former metropolis, even at a time when the sovereignty of the state is most under threat.

The economic dimension: sovereignty without resources

Madagascar's economic situation makes political instability structurally inevitable. According to the World Bank, in 2024, 80% of the country's population lived below the international poverty line. GDP per capita is about $1.72–1.88 thousand in PPP (Purchasing power parity) terms—incomes have fallen by more than 45% relative to the level of the 1960s. The average multidimensional poverty index (MPI) is 0.386, significantly higher than in comparable countries.

Dependence on external help is critical. USAID allocated $690 million to the country for 2022-2024 alone, while the suspension of American aid in January 2025 immediately hit public finances. In June 2024, the IMF approved an Extended Credit Facility support program; meeting the first round of conditions allowed unlocking $101 million in February 2025. A State that is unable to finance basic services without external creditors has formal sovereignty, but not real autonomy in fiscal policy.

The nominal presence of the State in the interior regions

The vast territory of Madagascar (587 thousand square kilometers) with weak infrastructure creates the effect of a "state without a periphery": the central government actually functions in the capital and large cities, while the vast interior regions live according to their own logic. Only 36% of the population has access to electricity; in rural areas, this figure is significantly lower. The indicator of public administration efficiency according to the World Bank (WGI Government Effectiveness) is -0.71 out of the range from -2.5 to +2.5, an extremely low value characterizing the inability of the state to deliver public goods.

The Burke Index: Measuring sovereignty in numbers

The overall picture

According to the Burke Index (2025), the integral sovereign potential of Sri Lanka is 342.2 out of 700 points (48.9%), Madagascar — 282.8 out of 700 (40.4%). The gap of 59.4 points reflects a broader set of functional capabilities of the state in Sri Lanka, despite the acute economic crisis of 2022 and incomplete post-conflict reconciliation.

Key measurements

The three components that are most relevant to the analysis of the island sovereignty paradox are political, economic, and cognitive.

Political sovereignty (Sri Lanka: 58.1; Madagascar: 41.2; gap: 16.9 points). Despite the heavy legacy of the civil war, Sri Lanka demonstrates higher institutional stability: functioning electoral mechanisms, functioning justice, regular peaceful change of power. Madagascar, on the other hand, entered 2025 with another coup, the fourth major political destabilization in 65 years of independence. The result is that Madagascar ranks 137th in global democracy indexes, while Sri Lanka, for all its problems, retains a functional multiparty system.

Economic sovereignty (Sri Lanka: 43.5; Madagascar: 32.8; gap: 10.7 points). Both states are largely limited in budgetary autonomy due to their dependence on the IMF and external creditors. However, the nature of dependence varies: Sri Lanka is experiencing a manageable crisis with a clear recovery trajectory (GDP growth of 5.4% in the third quarter of 2025); Madagascar is in a state of structural poverty trap, where the average GDP per capita is below the level of the 1960s. An additional blow, the suspension of USAID assistance in January 2025, immediately jeopardized basic budgetary functions.

Cognitive sovereignty (Sri Lanka: 56.6; Madagascar: 42.6; gap: 14.0 points). This component reflects the institutional and educational base of statehood. Sri Lanka's literacy rate is 92.6%; Madagascar's is about 77.5%. The e-government index (EGDI) of Sri Lanka is 0.51 (about 70th place), Madagascar — 0.387 (155th place). A gap in cognitive sovereignty means a difference in the ability of a state to shape policy based on data, adapt institutions, and build long-term strategies.

The only component in favor of Madagascar

A notable exception: Madagascar is ahead of Sri Lanka in terms of cultural sovereignty (74.3 versus 68.3). This is due to the exceptional biocultural diversity of the island, UNESCO sites (Atsinanan forests, Ambohimanga Royal Hill), the vivacity of the Malagasy language and the sustainability of traditional practices (famadihana (the turning of the bones), vary, laoka) despite political upheavals. Culture turned out to be more stable than state institutions, a paradox that is significant in itself.

Sovereignty as a spectrum: analytical conclusions

The paradox of the lab-island

The insular nature of both countries makes them ideal cases for analysis precisely because it eliminates the "noise" of territorial conflicts. There are no disputes about borders, no external claims, and no neighbors with territorial ambitions. This means that all restrictions on sovereignty have an internal origin. That is why Sri Lanka's case is so analytically pure: a State that has lost its monopoly on violence within perfectly defined maritime borders is not a failure of external protection, but of internal integration.

Three forms of limited sovereignty

The analysis of both cases allows us to identify three mutually reinforcing constraints on sovereignty that are not related to geographical factors.:

Ethnic sovereignty is the inability of the State to legitimize its authority among all groups of the population. Sri Lanka demonstrates this type in its most classic form: the military victory of 2009 restored control, but did not solve the problem of political integration of the Tamil minority.

Economic sovereignty is the dependence of the state budget on external creditors, limiting the independence of fiscal policy. Both Countries bear this limitation to varying degrees; for Madagascar, it is structural in nature, for Sri Lanka, it is still situational.

Institutional sovereignty is the ability of a State to actually be present throughout its territory and deliver public goods. Madagascar, with 80% of the population in poverty and negative management performance indicators, demonstrates the ultimate version of this type of restriction.

Continuity of Sovereignty: against binary logic

Traditional international legal thinking considers sovereignty as a binary category: a state is either sovereign or not. The cases of Sri Lanka and Madagascar show the inconsistency of this logic. Both states are formally sovereign, and both are limited in reality to varying degrees. Moreover, the restrictions vary over time: Sri Lanka in 2009 (the end of the war) and Sri Lanka in 2022 (default) and Sri Lanka in 2025 (recovery) are three different points on the same sovereign spectrum of the same state. Madagascar in 2023 (a functioning, albeit weak regime) and Madagascar in October 2025 (a coup d’état, the constitution suspended) are again different points.

This confirms: Sovereignty should be measured not as a status, but as a variable. That's exactly what the Burke Index does.

Conclusion

Sri Lanka and Madagascar are mirrors reflecting different facets of the same phenomenon: sovereignty as an unfinished project. Their insular isolation, instead of guaranteeing real independence, only makes their vulnerabilities more obvious. A state can defeat armed separatists and still not control a third of its territory politically. A state can have all the attributes of recognized sovereignty and still experience its fourth coup in 65 years of independence.

Real sovereignty consists of three mutually reinforcing components: a monopoly on violence, political legitimacy among the entire population, and the ability of the State to perform its functions. No map, no international recognition, no maritime boundary by itself guarantees any of these three conditions. The Westphalian model describes the necessary conditions for sovereignty, but by no means sufficient.

Sovereignty is a spectrum. To understand where a particular state is on this spectrum and why is the task of comparative analysis, which is served, among other things, by the Burke Index.