Great Powers and International Hierarchy
Great Powers and International Hierarchy

Author: Daniel McCormack

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-16

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 3319939769

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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?

Hierarchy in International Relations
Hierarchy in International Relations

Author: David A. Lake

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-08-15

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0801457696

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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.

The Great Powers and the International System
The Great Powers and the International System

Author: Bear F. Braumoeller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-02-11

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1139560441

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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.

Awkward Powers: Escaping Traditional Great and Middle Power Theory
Awkward Powers: Escaping Traditional Great and Middle Power Theory

Author: Gabriele Abbondanza

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-10-04

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 9811603707

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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.

Regions of War and Peace
Regions of War and Peace

Author: Douglas Lemke

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-01-21

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780521007726

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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.

Great Powers and World Order
Great Powers and World Order

Author: Charles W. Kegley

Publisher: CQ Press

Published: 2020-02-12

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 154435875X

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Great Powers and World Order encourages critical thinking about the nature of world order by presenting the historical information and theoretical concepts needed to make projections about the global future. Charles W. Kegley and Gregory Raymond ask students to compare retrospective cases and formulate their own hypotheses about not only the causes of war, but also the consequences of peace settlements. Historical case studies open a window to see what strategies for constructing world order were tried before, why one course of action was chosen over another, and how things turned out. By moving back and forth in each case study between history and theory, rather than treating them as separate topics, the authors hope to situate the assumptions, causal claims, and policy prescriptions of different schools of thought within the temporal domains in which they took root, giving the reader a better sense of why policy makers embraced a particular view of world order instead of an alternative vision.

The Hierarchy of States
The Hierarchy of States

Author: Ian Clark

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1989-11-02

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780521378611

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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.

Logics of Hierarchy
Logics of Hierarchy

Author: Alexander Cooley

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-09-25

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0801462495

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Political science has had trouble generating models that unify the study of the formation and consolidation of various types of states and empires. The business-administration literature, however, has long experience in observing organizations. According to a dominant model in this field, business firms generally take one of two forms: unitary (U) or multidivisional (M). The U-form organizes its various elements along the lines of administrative functions, whereas the M-form governs its periphery according to geography and territory. In Logics of Hierarchy, Alexander Cooley applies this model to political hierarchies across different cultures, geographical settings, and historical eras to explain a variety of seemingly disparate processes: state formation, imperial governance, and territorial occupation. Cooley illustrates the power of this formal distinction with detailed accounts of the experiences of Central Asian republics in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and compares them to developments in the former Yugoslavia, the governance of modern European empires, Korea during and after Japanese occupation, and the recent U.S. occupation of Iraq. In applying this model, Logics of Hierarchy reveals the varying organizational ability of powerful states to promote institutional transformation in their political peripheries and the consequences of these formations in determining pathways of postimperial extrication and state-building. Its focus on the common organizational problems of hierarchical polities challenges much of the received wisdom about imperialism and postimperialism.

Fighting for Status
Fighting for Status

Author: Jonathan Renshon

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-05-09

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1400885345

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There is widespread agreement that status or standing in the international system is a critical element in world politics. The desire for status is recognized as a key factor in nuclear proliferation, the rise of China, and other contemporary foreign policy issues, and has long been implicated in foundational theories of international relations and foreign policy. Despite the consensus that status matters, we lack a basic understanding of status dynamics in international politics. The first book to comprehensively examine this subject, Fighting for Status presents a theory of status dissatisfaction that delves into the nature of prestige in international conflicts and specifies why states want status and how they get it. What actions do status concerns trigger, and what strategies do states use to maximize or salvage their standing? When does status matter, and under what circumstances do concerns over relative position overshadow the myriad other concerns that leaders face? In examining these questions, Jonathan Renshon moves beyond a focus on major powers and shows how different states construct status communities of peer competitors that shift over time as states move up or down, or out, of various groups. Combining innovative network-based statistical analysis, historical case studies, and a lab experiment that uses a sample of real-world political and military leaders, Fighting for Status provides a compelling look at the causes and consequences of status on the global stage.

Empire Within
Empire Within

Author: Alexander D Barder

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1317590082

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This book explores the reverberating impacts between historical and contemporary imperial laboratories and their metropoles through three case studies concerning violence, surveillance and political economy. The invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 forced the United States to experiment and innovate in considerable ways. Faced with growing insurgencies that called into question its entire mission, the occupation authorities engaged in a series of tactical and technological innovations that changed the way it combated insurgents and managed local populations. The book presents new material to develop the argument that imperial and colonial contexts function as a laboratory in which techniques of violence, population control and economic principles are developed which are subsequently introduced into the domestic society of the imperial state. The text challenges the widely taken for granted notion that the diffusion of norms and techniques is a one-way street from the imperial metropole to the dependent or weak periphery. This work will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, critical security studies and international relations theory.