Great Powers And International Hierarchy

Hierarchical relationships—rules that structure both international and domestic politics—are pervasive. Yet we know little about how these relationships are constructed, maintained, and dismantled. This book fills this lacuna through a two-pronged research approach: first, it discusses how great power negotiations over international political settlements both respond to domestic politics within weak states and structure the specific forms that hierarchy takes. Second, it deduces three sets of hypotheses about hierarchy maintenance, construction, and collapse during the post-war era. By offering a coherent theoretical model of hierarchical politics within weaker states, the author is able to answer a number of important questions, including: Why does the United States often ally with autocratic states even though its most enduring relationships are with democracies? Why do autocratic hierarchical relationships require interstate coercion? Why do some hierarchies end violently and others peacefully? Why does hierarchical competition sometimes lead to interstate conflict and sometimes to civil conflict?

This book illuminates the complex interplay between specifically regional concerns and the wider international context which together define the regional hierarchy of states. On top of that hierarchy is the regional great power. Building on seven case-studies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Israel, Poland, South Africa and Vietnam, the authors demonstrate how this status cannot be attained simply by building up a huge military or economic power base. The attitudes and ambitions of the aspiring state, its regional neighbours and the great powers with global interests and reach must all be taken into consideration. The sheer number of factors which sustain regional great powerhood makes that status a precarious one. Although the end of the cold war may open up new regional space for regional great powers to exploit and so make them more important in providing for regional order, the autonomy of regions may still easily be overestimated.

Do great leaders make history? Or are they compelled to act by historical circumstance? This debate has remained unresolved since Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx framed it in the mid-nineteenth century, yet implicit answers inform our policies and our views of history. In this book, Professor Bear F. Braumoeller argues persuasively that both perspectives are correct: leaders shape the main material and ideological forces of history that subsequently constrain and compel them. His studies of the Congress of Vienna, the interwar period, and the end of the Cold War illustrate this dynamic, and the data he marshals provide systematic evidence that leaders both shape and are constrained by the structure of the international system.

International relations are generally understood as a realm of anarchy in which countries lack any superior authority and interact within a Hobbesian state of nature. In Hierarchy in International Relations, David A. Lake challenges this traditional view, demonstrating that states exercise authority over one another in international hierarchies that vary historically but are still pervasive today. Revisiting the concepts of authority and sovereignty, Lake offers a novel view of international relations in which states form social contracts that bind both dominant and subordinate members. The resulting hierarchies have significant effects on the foreign policies of states as well as patterns of international conflict and cooperation. Focusing largely on U.S.-led hierarchies in the contemporary world, Lake provides a compelling account of the origins, functions, and limits of political order in the modern international system. The book is a model of clarity in theory, research design, and the use of evidence. Motivated by concerns about the declining international legitimacy of the United States following the Iraq War, Hierarchy in International Relations offers a powerful analytic perspective that has important implications for understanding America's position in the world in the years ahead.

International relations are generally understood as a realm of anarchy in which countries lack any superior authority and interact within a Hobbesian state of nature. In Hierarchy in International Relations, David A. Lake challenges this traditional view, demonstrating that states exercise authority over one another in international hierarchies that vary historically but are still pervasive today. Revisiting the concepts of authority and sovereignty, Lake offers a novel view of international relations in which states form social contracts that bind both dominant and subordinate members. The resulting hierarchies have significant effects on the foreign policies of states as well as patterns of international conflict and cooperation. Focusing largely on U.S.-led hierarchies in the contemporary world, Lake provides a compelling account of the origins, functions, and limits of political order in the modern international system. The book is a model of clarity in theory, research design, and the use of evidence. Motivated by concerns about the declining international legitimacy of the United States following the Iraq War, Hierarchy in International Relations offers a powerful analytic perspective that has important implications for understanding America's position in the world in the years ahead.

This book introduces the editors’ new concept of “Awkward Powers”. By undertaking a critical re-examination of the state of International Relations theorising on the changing nature of the global power hierarchy, it draws attention to a number of countries that fit awkwardly into existing but outdated categories such as “great power” and “middle power”. It argues that conceptual categories pertaining to the apex of the international hierarchy have become increasingly unsatisfactory, and that new approaches focusing on such “Awkward Powers” can both rectify shortcomings on power theorising whilst shining a much-needed theoretical spotlight on significant but understudied states. The book’s contributors examine a broad range of empirical case studies, including both established and rising powers across a global scale to illustrate our conceptual claims. Through such a novel process, we argue that a better appreciation of the de facto international power hierarchy in the 21st century can be achieved.

The hierarchy of states presents Ian Clark's Reform and resistance in the international order, a well-established text on international relations first published in 1980, in a completely revised form. Combining a detailed examination of theory with a full account of historical developments, Dr Clark analyses the nature of international order - the hierarchical state system - and its potential for reform. The theory of international order is explored tracing two traditions of thought epitomised in the writings of Kant and Rousseau, whilst in a historical survey Dr Clark covers the main attempts to implement international order since 1815 and includes such aspects as concert diplomacy, alliance systems, international organisations as well as such informal understandings as nuclear deterrence, crisis management and spheres of influence. This revised edition contains two new chapters - one on international/world order issues and the other on 'macro' changes between 1815 and 1990. Dr Clark has updated his discussion on the course of superpower relations and most of the material on the post-1945 period is introduced in this edition for the first time.

In this contribution to the literature on the causes of war, Douglas Lemke asks whether the same factors affect minor powers as affect major ones. He investigates whether power parity and dissatisfaction with the status quo have an impact within Africa, the Far East, the Middle East and South America. Lemke argues that there are similarities across these regions and levels of power, and that parity and dissatisfaction are correlates of war around the world. The extent to which they increase the risk of war varies across regions, however, and the book looks at the possible sources of this cross-regional variation, concluding that differential progress toward development is the likely cause. This book will interest students and scholars of international relations and peace studies, as well as comparative politics and area studies.