Rob -- You asked:
Do international treaties still apply when a government has been dissolved?
In France's case, there were three separate governments between 1907 - 1945:
- the Third Republic (dissolved with the Armistice of 1940)
- the Vichy regime
- DeGaule's Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF)
The GPRF declared the Vichy government (and the laws it passed 1940-44) unconstitutional (although there is a brief synopsis regarding the legality of this at
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... egime.html)
In essence, when there is a "regime change," does the new regime have to acknowledge or re-ratify existing convention agreements?
Those are interesting questions. To try and answer them, we have to look at some background issues.
Treaties were originally made between sovereigns and bound them personally, but not their successors. The successor sovereign was free to disregard agreements entered into by his predecessor, and would ratify existing treaties to bind him personally only if he and/or his favorites somehow profited from the terms of the treaty.
This practice gradually changed as sovereigns were replaced by constitutional regimes, but became a problem when the sovereign or constitutional government was overthrown during a revolution or coup d'etat. The usual result of a change of sovereigns or form of government was to void or cancel all pre-existing agreements.
The usual solution was for the outside powers who had treaties with the previous sovereign or system of government to ask the new sovereign or revolutionary regime for assurances, "clarification," or a reaffirmation of rights and obligations. Sometimes this resulted in a renewal of the treaty, sometimes it didn't.
To deal with this and other recurring problems, the 1969 Vienna Convention on the law of treaties (
http://www.worldtradelaw.net/misc/viennaconvention.pdf ) made a number of changes to pre-existing international law. It would be a mistake to assume, however, that the concepts of the Vienna Convention were widely accepted 200, 100 or even 50 years earlier -- if they had been, the convention would have been unnecessary.
Keeping this framework in mind, let's consider the 1940-1946 period. Your first question was:
Do international treaties still apply when a government has been dissolved?
I think this issue turns on how and whether the government has been dissolved. If the "dissolved" government still maintains a physical existence (as a government in exile, or a government "on the run"), I think the answer is yes. If the "dissolved" government no longer has any factual existence, the answer is no.
Your second question was:
In essence, when there is a "regime change," does the new regime have to acknowledge or re-ratify existing convention agreements?
Where the new regime is revolutionary or is a substantially different form of state (as opposed to a different collection of political faces in a continuously operating democracy), I think the answer is yes. Where the basis of state sovereignty has changed, the treaties should be submitted to the new sovereigns for acceptance or rejection. However, if the new government is silent on the subject, there is an inference that it has no objection to the treaties.
This would be the approach in 1940-1946. As noted above, in 1969 the Vienna Convention created a rule or presumption that the treaties would continue in effect until denounced by the new sovereign.
