What influence have the OSCE, Council of Europe, EU and Russia had on policy and legislative adaptation in Estonia and Ukraine since 1991? ‘Stateness’ is congruence between the territorial definition and the right of citizenship in the state. Surprisingly, it is a much-neglected concept in the state-building and democratisation literature. To address this gap, the concept of stateness is expanded upon and used in this work to answer the above question. This is done by means of analysis of policy areas operationalising stateness. By analysing the impact of the international actors cited above as the causal factor in the consolidation of stateness, conclusions are drawn as to the manner of influence of their policy demands and expectations on domestic policy and legislative adaptation in Estonia and Ukraine since 1991. The theoretical and conceptual contribution to state-building in comparative European politics is thus developed further by this work. Moreover, the empirical contribution provides an applicable operationalisation of the concept through respective policy areas. Olena Podolian is a political scientist. This study is her dissertation, completed at the Department of Political Science, and in connection with the Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS), at Södertörn University, Sweden.