The modern international community is made up of two categories of states: those that are universally recognized, and those that are not. Some of the non-recognized states try (in vain) to convince more states to recognize them, others are unlikely ever to be recognized. We are reminded every now and then – such as during the current COVID-19 pandemic – that isolation and limited representation in international relations may have serious negative consequences for these countries. This unfortunate division is reflected in the academic literature on parliamentary diplomacy. We learn from it that parliamentarians and parliamentary diplomacy can play an important role in international relations, but that these findings are limited to the world of recognized states. We know very little about how parliamentary diplomacy works when it includes parliaments and parliamentarians from unrecognized and unrepresented states.

The book has sought to fill in this research gap. Some of the findings will not surprise anyone. The short overview of parliamentary diplomacy of unrepresented and unrecognized states has shown that in most of them its development is, at best, at a rudimentary level. The lack of universal recognition is undoubtedly the main obstacle, but other factors also restrict possibilities for parliaments and parliamentarians of unrepresented and unrecognized states to be active internationally. The majority of states we have studied are considered partially free in terms of political freedoms they ensure for their citizens, or not free at all. This, in turn, questions the legitimacy of their parliamentary representatives. Further, their isolation reduces diplomatic tools they can use to pursue their foreign policy goals. Participating in parliamentary diplomacy is particularly difficult for them because they have either insufficient contacts or rather limited financial means to send parliamentarians abroad to meet their peers from other states. The lack of funding causes the transfer of tasks originally assigned to parliamentarians on to their governments’ representative offices abroad. Such is the situation in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and Somaliland.

One group of parliamentarians is particularly limited internationally, because of their dependence on the so-called patron states. Governments and parliaments in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria depend on protection by the Russian Federation. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and its parliament depend on Turkey. The government and parliamentarians in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) are in a particularly bad situation.