Short version: to start a new country, you need land, ideally with the existing owner's blessing, a working government, and enough people, patience, and diplomacy to make the claim stick. Everything below this paragraph is the long version: the doctrine, the precedent, and the people already attempting it.
§1 The Plain English Brief
Nobody grants you a country. There is no office to file with, no licence to obtain, no supranational body empowered to say yes. What exists instead is a slow, factual test: do you have people, do you have territory, do you have a government that actually functions, and can you deal with other states as an equal. Meet that test convincingly enough, for long enough, and in a manner other states are not compelled to oppose, and you are, for most practical purposes, a country.
The rest of this entry sets out the doctrine behind that test, the routes people have actually used to try to satisfy it, two live attempts worth watching, and, because founding a nation is also an act of imagination, a little room to dream about what lies beyond the flag.
§2 A Note on Method: Ethical, Lawful, and Peaceful Only
Before anything else, a statement of principle. This entry, and the Startup States Society that publishes it, addresses only the peaceful, lawful, consensual founding of new states. Nothing here should be read as encouragement toward, or guidance for, any other route.
What the Society Stands Against
The Society condemns coups, armed insurrection, civil war, ethnic cleansing, coercion, and the violent seizures of territory and government that produced so many states during the twentieth century. These methods are not merely impractical. They are unlawful under the United Nations Charter and a source of immense human suffering, and no legitimate route to new statehood runs through them.
The pathways discussed below, dry land acquired by consent, negotiated leasehold, referendum, and lawful settlement of genuinely unclaimed territory, are the only routes this resource endorses. Where history is used to illustrate a point, including cases that involved conflict elsewhere, it is cited for its legal reasoning alone, not as a model of method.
§3 Beyond Montevideo: The Doctrine in Full
The 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States remains the standard reference: a state requires a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.1 It further holds that the political existence of a state is independent of recognition by other states, the declarative theory, under which statehood is a fact to be observed rather than a licence to be issued.
But Montevideo is a starting point for a much larger conversation, not its end. The constitutive theory counters that, whatever the doctrine says, an unrecognised entity struggles to open a bank account, borrow abroad, or defend itself in international fora, so recognition is not just evidentiary, it is often decisive in practice. The Badinter Arbitration Committee, convened during the break-up of Yugoslavia, added a further gloss still cited today: statehood claims are assessed against respect for human rights, minority protections, and existing frontiers, not the four Montevideo criteria alone. The International Court of Justice's 2010 Kosovo Advisory Opinion added a further, much-debated clarification: general international law contains no blanket prohibition on declarations of independence as such, though the manner and context of a declaration can still render it unlawful.3 And underlying all of it is the principle of effectiveness in international law: the long-standing idea that law eventually accommodates facts on the ground, however irregularly they arose, once those facts prove stable and durable.
| Declarative Theory | Constitutive Theory | Effectiveness Principle |
|---|---|---|
| Statehood exists once the Montevideo criteria are met in fact. Recognition is confirmatory, not creative. | Statehood only functions in practice once other states recognise it. Without recognition, trade, credit, and legal standing abroad are all constrained. | International law tends, over time, to accommodate durable, effective control, however contested its origin, once it proves stable. |
Read together, these doctrines point to the same practical conclusion: build the substance of a state through lawful means, then work, patiently and diplomatically, to have that substance acknowledged.
§4 Land, Sea, Cloud, Chain, and Beyond the Sky
Every serious founding project must choose where its state is meant to exist. The options have multiplied in recent decades, but they are not remotely equal in legal durability.
Dry Land, by Purchase or Long Term Lease, with Parent State Consent
The cleanest, best evidenced route to new statehood remains ordinary territory, acquired through negotiation rather than confrontation, with the informed consent of whichever sovereign currently holds it. Montenegro's 2006 separation from Serbia is the clearest modern illustration of this principle in a slightly different but closely related form: a consensual, treaty governed, referendum based dissolution, agreed in advance under the 2003 Constitutional Charter, producing a new state recognised almost immediately by all five permanent members of the UN Security Council.2 No shots were fired. No claim was left in doubt. That is the standard every other pathway on this page is measured against.
Purchase or Sovereign Lease
Physical territory, acquired or leased with the consent of the existing sovereign. Slowest to arrange, hardest to dislodge once secured.
Seasteading and Platforms
Fixed or floating structures at sea. Sealand has endured for decades on this model; open ocean seasteading remains largely untested at scale.
Digital Only Jurisdiction
e-residency and digital nation projects extend services and identity across borders, but confer no territory and, so far, no sovereignty.
Blockchain Native Polities
Governance conducted through tokens and smart contracts. Compelling for internal coordination; irrelevant, on its own, to the Montevideo test.
Contested or Unclaimed Territory
Land such as Bir Tawil attracts declarations precisely because no state currently administers it, but "unclaimed" is rarer, and more contested, than it looks.
Outer Space
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty currently bars any claim of national sovereignty over celestial bodies. A live legal frontier, and a genuine long run aspiration, but not yet an available pathway.
The pattern holds across every case this Society has studied: the further a project moves from negotiated, dry land consent, the more it must substitute sheer endurance and diplomatic persistence for the legal clarity that a willing host sovereign can provide in a single agreement.
§5 Two Live Attempts Worth Watching
Founding a country is not merely historical. As of this writing, at least two independent, publicly documented projects are actively pursuing new statehood by lawful means.
Eleutheria: The New Nation Project
A project pursuing a sovereign lease from an existing nation as its primary route, with an open ocean seasteading component under active development in parallel. Its founder sits on the Startup States Society's advisory council.
newnationproject.org ↗Anthemism
A project named for Ayn Rand's novella Anthem, seeking to found a new laissez-faire capitalist state rather than continue reforming existing ones. Run independently of this Society, though its founder is known to it.
anthemism.org ↗Neither project has yet achieved recognised statehood, nor has anyone, by the standard this entry sets out, in recent years, save through negotiated referendum. Their value lies in showing, in real time, how the doctrine above meets the friction of actually trying, by lawful and peaceful means.
§6 Beyond the Flag
It is easy, and faintly absurd, to stop at a name and a flag. The genuinely interesting question is what a founded state is for. A currency designed from first principles rather than inherited by accident. A body of law drafted with the benefit of every jurisdiction's mistakes already visible. A citizenship that might be granted by contribution rather than birth, and a capital that could, within a single generation, be built rather than merely occupied. Some founders dream of platforms far out to sea, powered and provisioned from the first day. Others imagine jurisdiction extending to orbit and, eventually, past it, a claim the law does not yet permit, but one that grows less fanciful with every launch. None of this arrives by wanting it. But the founders who succeed, historically, are the ones who let themselves imagine the whole of it before they draft the first article of their constitution.
§7 A Practical Roadmap
Clarify the objective
Full sovereign statehood, a special jurisdiction, a maritime platform, or a symbolic project each imply a different legal strategy, timeline, and cost.
Undertake rigorous legal research
Establish, with qualified counsel, whether intended territory is genuinely unclaimed, disputed, or under existing sovereignty.
Pursue the gold standard route first
Approach negotiated purchase or long term lease with an existing sovereign before considering less durable alternatives.
Build effective government in fact
Draft a constitution, establish institutions, and demonstrate the capacity to maintain order, since the Montevideo criteria are proved by conduct.
Pursue recognition deliberately
Recognition rarely arrives unsolicited; sustained diplomatic outreach is as important as the underlying legal claim.
Find others attempting the same thing
Very few founders succeed working entirely alone; the community of people pursuing this seriously is smaller, and more accessible, than it appears.
Where Founders Compare Notes
The projects above did not emerge in isolation, and none of the doctrine on this page substitutes for direct exchange with people who have already tested it against reality. The Startup States Society, a Geneva registered Swiss Verein devoted to the research, study, and promulgation of peaceful de novo sovereign statehood, maintains an advisory council drawn from active founders, publishes the primary research this entry draws on, and convenes the wider community working on exactly these questions.
Read the Society's published research at startupstates.swiss ↗
§8 Frequently Asked Questions
How do you start a new country?
By combining a legal strategy that satisfies the recognised criteria for statehood, a territorial strategy, ideally dry land, by purchase or lease, and a governance strategy capable of effective, lasting administration.
What is the best way to acquire territory for a new country?
Dry land, obtained by purchase or long term lease with the consent of an existing sovereign, remains the cleanest and most durable route, following the same underlying logic behind Montenegro's peaceful 2006 separation from Serbia.
Is it legal to start your own country?
Declaring a new state is not, of itself, unlawful. What is unlawful is breaching an existing state's territorial integrity by force. Lawful pathways include consensual cession, negotiated lease, and settlement of genuinely unclaimed territory.
What are the legal criteria for statehood?
The 1933 Montevideo Convention's four criteria: a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Are people actually trying to start new countries right now?
Yes, including the New Nation Project (Eleutheria) and Anthemism, both discussed above, alongside longer running precedents such as Liberland and Sealand.
Does the Startup States Society support any means of starting a country?
No. The Society supports only ethical, lawful, and peaceful pathways, achieved through negotiation and consent, and it condemns coups, corruption, civil war, and coercion as methods of state formation.
§9 Resources and Further Reading
Startup States Society
Research, advisory council, and community for founders pursuing peaceful de novo sovereign statehood.
Monograph, Open AccessHow to Build New Countries
ISBN 978-1-291-75753-8. The Consensual Theory of Statehood, the 999 year sovereign lease, and the Grantor State model.
Monograph, Open AccessStartup States
ISBN 978-1-291-80104-0. Modern startup jurisdiction practice, from charter cities to special economic zones.
Primary SourceMontevideo Convention, 1933: Full Text
The Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
Primary SourceICJ Kosovo Advisory Opinion, 2010
The International Court of Justice's ruling on the legality of unilateral declarations of independence.
Primary SourceCharter of the United Nations
Article 2(4) and the prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state.
- Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, 26 December 1933, 165 LNTS 19, Article 1.
- 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, held 21 May 2006 pursuant to the 2003 Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro; independence declared 3 June 2006 and recognised by Serbia on 5 June 2006.
- Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 2010, p. 403.