Dissolution in politics is when a state, institution, nation, or administrative region dissolves or ceases to exist, usually separating into two or more entities, or being annexed. This can be carried out through armed conflict, legal means, diplomacy, or a combination of all or any of the three. It is similar to dissolution in the legal sense.
It is not to be confused with secession, where a state, institution, nation, or administrative region leaves; nor federalisation where the structure changes but is not dissolved. There have been several dissolutions in history, while others have been proposed or advanced as hypotheticals.
Historical dissolutions
Austria-Hungary
In 1918, the dissolution of Austria-Hungary was a major geopolitical event that occurred as a result of the growth of internal social contradictions and the separation of different parts of Austria-Hungary. The reason for the collapse of the state was World War I, the 1918 crop failure and the economic crisis.
On October 17, 1918, the Hungarian Parliament terminated the union with Austria and declared the independence of the country, Czechoslovakia was formed on October 28, followed by the emergence of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on October 29. On November 3, the West Ukrainian People's Republic declared independence; on November 6, Poland was re-established in Krakow. Also during the collapse of the empire, the Republic of Tarnobrzeg, the Hutsul Republic, the Lemko Republic, the Komancza Republic, the Republic of Prekmurje, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Slovak Soviet Republic, the Banat Republic and the Italian Regency of Carnaro arose.
The remaining territories inhabited by divided peoples fell into the composition of existing or newly formed states. Legally, the collapse of the empire was formalized in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria, which also acted as a peace treaty after the First World War, and in the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary.
Czechoslovakia
The dissolution of Czechoslovakia took effect on 1 January 1993 and was the self-determined split of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both mirrored the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, which had been created in 1969 as the constituent states of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic.
East Germany
On 22 July 1990 a law was passed recreating the new states of the former East Germany, which were dissolved by the East German government in 1952. The states are: Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The law was to take effect on 14 October 1990.
On 31 August 1990 the Unification Treaty set an accession date of October 3 (modifying the State Creation Law to come into effect on that date). The Unification Treaty declared that (with few exceptions) at accession the laws of East Germany would be replaced overnight by those of West Germany. The Volkskammer approved the treaty on September 20 by a margin of 299-80—in effect, voting East Germany to dissolve itself.
On 3 October 1990 the five new states and East Berlin (which was unified with West Berlin), were unified with West Germany in 1990.
The post-1990 united Germany is not a successor state, but an enlarged continuation of the former West Germany. As such, the enlarged Federal Republic of Germany retained the West German seats in international organizations, while the memberships in the Warsaw Pact and other international organizations to which East Germany belonged simply ceased to exist because East Germany ceased to exist.
Holy Roman Empire
The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire occurred de facto on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, abdicated his title and released all imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire. Since the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire had been recognised by Western Europeans as the legitimate continuation of the ancient Western Roman Empire due to its emperors having been proclaimed as Roman emperors by the papacy. Through this Roman legacy, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed to be universal monarchs whose jurisdiction extended beyond their empire's formal borders to all of Christian Europe and beyond. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire was a long and drawn-out process lasting centuries. The formation of the first modern sovereign territorial states in the 16th and 17th centuries, which brought with it the idea that jurisdiction corresponded to actual territory governed, threatened the universal nature of the Holy Roman Empire.