The Wilson/Tobar Doctrine

Tobar Doctrine that grew out of the treaties written among the Central American republics in 1907 and renewed in 1923. Designed to discourage revolutions, these provided that the parties "shall not recognize any other Government which may come into power in any of the five Republics as a consequence of a coup d'etat, or of a revolution against the recognized Government, so long as the freely elected representatives of the people thereof have not constitutionally reorganized the country." They also disqualified the leaders of a coup d'état from assuming the presidency or vice presidency. The United States applied the doctrine to the revolutionary leader Federico Tinoco in Costa Rica in 1917, to Honduras in 1924, and to the government of Emiliano Chamorro of Nicaragua in 1925, thereby giving extreme expression to Jefferson's "will of the nation substantially declared," perhaps out of fear that dictatorships and revolutionary governments posed a danger for international peace.

States may withhold recognition or withdraw it in order to punish regimes they regard as illegitimate and those guilty of illegal conduct. In either case the executive, legislative, and judicial acts of an offender are treated as nonexistent. Treaties with the offender can be suspended, and foreign forces may be admitted to aid rebels against it. It may be rejected as a plaintiff in foreign courts and denied property situated abroad. Secretary of State Seward refused to recognize a revolutionary government in Peru in 1868; at the request of the Wilson administration a number of states rescinded their recognition of the Mexican government of Victoriano Huerta in 1918; still others refused to recognize the state of Manchukuo that Japan created in Manchuria on 18 February 1932. The major reason for recognizing the Soviet Union in 1933 was the (vain) hope that trade with it would help the United States climb out of the Great Depression.

Source: http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Recognition.html