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Introduction

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Great Powers and International Hierarchy

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Abstract

In addition to outlining the argument of the book, this chapter provides a definition of hierarchical institutions and explains how hierarchy is different from domestic and interstate politics. I also illustrate why a study of hierarchy is important. First, a study of hierarchy provides a way to understand “great power” politics while still incorporating the influence of smaller states. Second, because hierarchy mutually constitutes domestic and interstate politics, scholars can draw false inferences about either of the latter two processes if they do not account for the influence of hierarchy. Finally, scholars have persistently misunderstood the sources of political violence by conflating civil and interstate conflict with hierarchical conflict.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 516.

  2. 2.

    Quoted in Roger Morgan, The United States and West Germany, 1945–1973: A Study in Alliance Politics (Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 15.

  3. 3.

    Quoted in Steven J. Brady, Eisenhower and Adenauer: Alliance Maintenance Under Pressure, 1953–1960 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 74.

  4. 4.

    Quoted in G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 182.

  5. 5.

    James McAllister, No Exit: America and the German Problem, 1943–1954 (Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 181.

  6. 6.

    David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations (Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 87–88.

  7. 7.

    Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 1999); Branislav L. Slantchev, “The Power to Hurt: Costly Conflict with Completely Informed States.” American Political Science Review 97.1 (2003), pp. 123–133; Bahar Leventoglu and Branislav L. Slantchev, “The Armed Peace: A Punctuated Equilibrium Theory of War.” American Journal of Political Science 51.4 (2007), pp. 755–771.

  8. 8.

    Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, “Democracy, War Initiation, and Victory.” American Political Science Review 92.2 (1998), pp. 377–389; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace.” American Political Science Review 93.4 (1999), pp. 791–807.

  9. 9.

    Hein E. Goemans, “Fighting for Survival the Fate of Leaders and the Duration of War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44.5 (2000), pp. 555–579; Giacomo Chiozza and Hein Erich Goemans, Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

  10. 10.

    James D. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests Tying Hands Versus Sinking Costs.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41.1 (1997), pp. 68–90; Alastair Smith, “International Crises and Domestic Politics.” American Political Science Review 92.3 (1998), pp. 623–638.

  11. 11.

    Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars.

  12. 12.

    Bear F. Braumoeller, The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory in Empirical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 80.

  13. 13.

    Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 95–96.

  14. 14.

    Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 24.

  15. 15.

    Waltz, Theory of International Relations, p. 96.

  16. 16.

    Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations.

  17. 17.

    David A. Lake, Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 18.

  18. 18.

    Waltz, Theory of International Relations, p. 131, emphasis in original.

  19. 19.

    Braumoeller, The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory in Empirical Perspective, p. 80.

  20. 20.

    More on this in Chapter 5.

  21. 21.

    Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics.” International Organization 51.4 (1997), pp. 513–553; Jeffry A. Frieden, “Actors and Preferences in International Relations.” Strategic Choice and International Relations (1999), pp. 39–76.

  22. 22.

    Jeffry A. Frieden, “Invested Interests: The Politics of National Economic Policies in a World of Global Finance.” International Organization (1991), pp. 425–451.

  23. 23.

    Albert Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of International Trade, 1945.

  24. 24.

    Benjamin O. Fordham, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Exports and American Intervention in World War I.” International Organization 61.2 (2007), pp. 277–310.

  25. 25.

    Dylan Balch-Lindsay, Andrew J. Enterline, and Kyle A. Joyce, “Third-Party Intervention and the Civil War Process.” Journal of Peace Research 45.3 (2008), pp. 345–363; Stephen E. Gent, “Going in When It Counts: Military Intervention and the Outcome of Civil Conflicts.” International Studies Quarterly 52.4 (2008), pp. 713–735.

  26. 26.

    Alan J. Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans.” International Studies Quarterly 52.1 (2008), pp. 49–80.

  27. 27.

    Clair Apodaca and Michael Stohl, “United States Human Rights Policy and Foreign Assistance.” International Studies Quarterly 43.1 (1999): Though they sometimes condition these goals on the character of the recipient government, as in nielsen 2013 rewarding. Douglas M. Gibler, “United States Economic Aid and Repression: The Opportunity Cost Argument.” The Journal of Politics 70.2 (2008), pp. 513–526; Brian Lai, “Examining the Goals of US Foreign Assistance in the Post-Cold War Period, 1991–96.” Journal of Peace Research 40.1 (2003), pp. 103–128.

  28. 28.

    Burcu Savun and Daniel C. Tirone, “Foreign Aid, Democratization, and Civil Conflict: How Does Democracy Aid Affect Civil Conflict?” American Journal of Political Science 55.2 (2011), pp. 233–246; Joseph K. Young and Michael G. Findley, “Can Peace Be Purchased? A Sectoral-Level Analysis of Aid’s Influence on Transnational Terrorism.” Public Choice 149.3–4 (2011), pp. 365–381.

  29. 29.

    Amanda A. Licht, “Coming into Money: The Impact of Foreign Aid on Leader Survival.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 54.1 (2010), pp. 58–87.

  30. 30.

    Harold Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Rev. ed.) (Equinox Pub, 2007), pp. 338–340.

  31. 31.

    Alexander Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2012).

  32. 32.

    Celeste A. Wallander, “Institutional Assets and Adaptability: NATO After the Cold War.” International Organization 54.4 (2000), pp. 705–735.

  33. 33.

    Scott Wolford, The Politics of Military Coalitions (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 88–89.

  34. 34.

    Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker, “How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations.” Journal of Political Economy 114.5 (2006), pp. 905–930.

  35. 35.

    Axel Dreher, Jan-Egbert Sturm, and James Raymond Vreeland, “Global Horse Trading: IMF Loans for Votes in the United Nations Security Council.” European Economic Review 53.7 (2009), pp. 742–757.

  36. 36.

    Axel Dreher, Jan-Egbert Sturm, and James Raymond Vreeland, “Development Aid and International Politics: Does Membership on the UN Security Council Influence World Bank Decisions?” Journal of Development Economics 88.1 (2009), pp. 1–18.

  37. 37.

    Kevin A. Clarke and David M. Primo, A Model Discipline: Political Science and the Logic of Representations (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 53.

  38. 38.

    Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics, p. 34.

  39. 39.

    Daron Acemoglǔ and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship, 2006.

  40. 40.

    Ernesto Dal Bó, Pedro Dal Bó, and Rafael Di Tella, “‘Plata o Plomo?’: Bribe and Punishment in a Theory of Political Influence.” American Political Science Review 100.1 (2006), pp. 41–53.

  41. 41.

    Kevin M. Morrison, “Natural Resources, Aid, and Democratization: A Best-Case Scenario.” Public Choice 131.3–4 (2007), pp. 365–386.

  42. 42.

    Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 52.

  43. 43.

    Jane Burbank, “An Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7.3 (2006), p. 400.

  44. 44.

    Sarah C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 31.

  45. 45.

    Seva Gunitsky, “From Shocks to Waves: Hegemonic Transitions and Democratization in the Twentieth Century.” International Organization 68.3 (2014), pp. 561–597.

  46. 46.

    See for instance Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics.” International Organization 32.4 (1978), pp. 881–912; Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42.3 (1988), pp. 427–460; Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics”; Beth A. Simmons, Who Adjusts?: Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years (Princeton University Press, 1997); Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  47. 47.

    Helen V. Milner, Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 3.

  48. 48.

    The direction of this change depends on the distribution of “hawkish” and “dovish” interests within the state.

  49. 49.

    Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986.” American Political Science Review 87.3 (1993), pp. 624–638; Bueno de Mesquita et al., “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace”; Darren Filson and Suzanne Werner, “Bargaining and Fighting: The Impact of Regime Type on War Onset, Duration, and Outcomes.” American Journal of Political Science 48.2 (2004), pp. 296–313.

  50. 50.

    Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations.

  51. 51.

    Patrick J. McDonald, “Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of Peace.” International Organization (2015), pp. 1–32.

  52. 52.

    Benjamin Smith, “Oil Wealth and Regime Survival in the Developing World, 1960–1999.” American Journal of Political Science 48.2 (2004), pp. 232–246; Macartan Humphreys, “Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution Uncovering the Mechanisms.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49.4 (2005), pp. 508–537.

  53. 53.

    After complaints by human rights groups in the United States, the U.S. State Department completed the sale by circumventing a loophole that required Congressional notification of all sales of greater than $1 million. The total package was instead broken into many smaller tranches.

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    Google Scholar 

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    Daniel McCormack

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McCormack, D. (2019). Introduction. In: Great Powers and International Hierarchy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93976-6_1

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