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The procedure whereby as many original copies of a treaty or other document are drawn up as there are signatories. By this means each state is able to have its own copy and – more importantly – its own head of state and plenipotentiaries named first in the preamble of this copy. These plenipotentiaries are also able to sign this copy before the plenipotentiaries of the other parties. Thus the signatories alternate in occupying the place of honour in the treaty.
One of a number of devices designed to alleviate the rancour aroused by arguments between states over precedence, the alternat appears first to have come into vogue in Europe in the sixteenth century. The flaw in this system of treaty signature, of course, was that it assumed universal acceptance of the principle that each state was entitled to participate in a ‘rotation in precedence’. It assumed, in other words, precisely that equality between states the perceived absence of which had led to arguments over precedence in the first place. Not surprisingly, it was not universally accepted and disputes over whether or not one state ‘had the alternat’ with another became just another vehicle of power politics. France, for example, did not grant the alternat to Russia until 1779. Nevertheless, the idea of equality within classes of states (especially the class of great powers), coupled with the force of established precedents, gave currency to the system and it remains the usual practice in signing bilateral treaties today. (Where there are language differences between the parties each state\'s own copy also displays the version in its own language first, that is, on the left-hand page or column.) In light of the great growth in the number of states in the twentieth century, however, it is not surprising that the alternat has been abandoned for multilateral treaties, where it is regarded as much more convenient to sign just one original in the agreed alphabetical order of the names of the participating states. |
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