Risk and Hierarchy in International Society

Liberal Interventionism in the Post-Cold War Era

W. Clapton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137396365
• eBook ISBN: 9781137396372
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The English School of International Relations has traditionally maintained that international society cannot accommodate hierarchical relationships between states. This book employs a unique theoretical and conceptual approach challenging this view and arguing that hierarchies are formed on Western states' need to manage globalised risks.

1

The Hierarchical Society

The concept of an international society is arguably the English School’s most distinctive contribution to the field of IR. Containing elements of realism, liberalism and constructivism, the concept of an international society and the English School in general provide a unique perspective on how states interact with one another and how these relationships are structured and ordered. As Bull famously commented:

A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.¹

As per the title of the book in which this quote appeared, one of Bull’s key assumptions regarding international society is its fundamentally anarchical nature.

The reason for this assumption, of course, is the fact that all states are sovereign entities. Despite being one of the more heavily debated concepts within the discipline of IR, states are generally sovereign to the extent to which they answer to no higher authority. Sovereignty in this sense has traditionally been defined as an indivisible and absolute attribute – a political community is either sovereign or it is not.² This view has long been established in the mainstream of the discipline, drawing from the works of renowned jurists such as Bodin, Grotius and Austin.³ Generally then, as an anarchical society of sovereign states, the English School has regarded hierarchy not just as an insignificant feature of international society, but also something that is potentially threatening or damaging to the society of states.

This is quite distinct from a number of different theoretical approaches that explicitly recognise the existence and salience of international hierarchies. Generally, this literature on hierarchy has been critical in its orientation, comprised of works employing post-colonialism, Marxism or Critical Theory. However, there has also been a recent emergence of a substantial body of more ‘mainstream’ works that have considered hierarchy within IR more generally and within international society more specifically. For example, Simpson has identified the enduring importance of hierarchy and inequality as key historical features of international society,⁴ Hobson and Sharman have identified the continuing importance of hierarchy within international relations,⁵ while Lake, Goh and Donnelly have all identified various forms of hierarchy among states in the post-Cold War era.⁶ Despite this relative lack of focus on hierarchy, some within the English School, such as Clark, have suggested that ‘hierarchy within anarchy’ is indeed possible in the form of hegemony.⁷

The purpose of this chapter is to continue these considerations of hierarchy within international society and question some of the key claims made within the English School and the discipline of IR more generally, especially those surrounding the nature of sovereignty and the supposedly anarchical nature of international society. This chapter argues that the conception of an anarchical international society provided by Bull and many other IR scholars does not fully capture the character of social and political relationships between states. Rather, we must also account for the fact that international hierarchies are a marked, and in some cases predominant, feature of interstate relationships. This is not to contend that international society is not anarchical – it is, in the sense that there is no centralised political authority to which all states submit – but rather to suggest that both hierarchy and anarchy are significant features of international politics.

This contention relies both on a conceptualisation of hierarchy as a compatible feature of international society and of sovereignty as something other than an indivisible or absolute attribute. Indeed, an important question that arises from the contention that hierarchy is prevalent within international society is how does this impact prevailing notions of sovereignty and statehood? In particular, we must account for what Simpson and Donnelly have termed ‘sovereign inequalities’ in the post-Cold War era and the way in which the identification of hierarchical relationships between states has challenged traditional conceptions of sovereignty and statehood within international society.⁸ One weakness of parts of the existing literature on hierarchy is that the analyses provided have largely been divorced from such considerations.⁹ Generally, scholars have considered hierarchy as a fundamentally different ordering principle compared to an anarchical order of sovereign states and, therefore, have not systematically considered its implications for prevailing understandings of sovereignty and statehood.¹⁰

The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. The first part provides an outline of the concept of hierarchy and defines what hierarchy entails in an international context. It suggests that we should conceive of hierarchies as fundamentally social relationships, underpinned by particular norms, or social logics, and legitimated by all parties to the relationship. This depiction of hierarchies as social relationships involving the exercise of relational authority by the superordinate party is central to the contention that hierarchy is compatible with international society. The second part of the chapter considers the treatment of hierarchy within the English School, especially in what might be termed the ‘classical’ English School works of scholars such as Bull. It highlights the problematic lack of attention afforded to the concept of hierarchy given its centrality to the key definitions and depictions of international society and its institutions that these scholars have provided.

The third and final part of the chapter attempts to bring hierarchy into the English School. It does so through three conceptual moves. First, it conceives of international society as a dynamic and historically contingent assemblage of norms and institutions, one that is flexible and adaptable enough to accommodate a variety of different forms of social relationships between states. Second, it advances a conception of sovereignty that draws attention to its divisible and historically contingent nature in order to contend that sovereign states can (at least conceptually) be subordinate parties within relations of hierarchy. Finally, it reconsiders the dichotomous relationship between anarchy and hierarchy that has prevailed within the mainstream literature and suggests that the two are in fact compatible. Through these three conceptual moves, this chapter demonstrates that hierarchies can exist within international society.

Defining Hierarchy

In order to demonstrate the compatibility of hierarchy with international society, we must first explore the definition of the concept of hierarchy itself. While several recent works have sought to draw attention to the concept of hierarchy and its enduring role within international politics,¹¹ Waltz provided what has perhaps become the ‘standard’ definition of hierarchy within the mainstream IR literature. Waltz suggests that anarchy and hierarchy are distinct ordering principles, where anarchy refers to the lack of centralised authority, whereas hierarchy entails ‘relations of super- and subordination’ in which ‘actors are formally differentiated according to the degrees of their authority, and their distinct functions are specified’.¹² Importantly, this definition of hierarchy draws attention to the authoritative nature of hierarchical relationships.

Other scholars who have explored the concept of hierarchy have ­followed Waltz in their emphasis on the authoritative nature of hierarchical relationships.¹³ Hobson and Sharman contend that hierarchical relationships are fundamentally authoritative, as opposed to purely coercive,¹⁴ entailing a social relationship between the superordinate and subordinate parties that both recognise as legitimate.¹⁵ As they suggest, ‘Hierarchical authority means … that some are entitled to command and some are required to obey, and that both sides recognize as legitimate the social logic of this unequal situation’.¹⁶ Hence Hobson and Sharman define hierarchy ‘as a relationship between two (or more) actors whereby one is entitled to command and the other is obligated to obey, and this relationship is recognized as right and legitimate by each’.¹⁷

Lake also focuses on hierarchy as a type of relationship based on consensual relational authority, arguing that external restrictions on states constitute hierarchical authority relationships when one state can compel another to behave in a particular manner and the subordinate state voluntarily complies.¹⁸ Importantly, the concept of relational authority offered by Lake as well as Hobson and Sharman differs from traditional formal-legal conceptions of authority that have pervaded the discipline of IR and led scholars to dismiss the possibility of hierarchy in an ostensibly anarchical international environment.¹⁹ Indeed, if we were to conceive of authority in formal-legal terms, with authority and authoritative acts sanctioned by law, then by definition such authority, and hence hierarchies, cannot exist in an anarchical international environment. Conceiving of authority in relational or social terms allows us to move past this problem.

Another important facet of the concepts of hierarchy and authority is the relationship of both to the concept of coercion. Lake, like Hobson and Sharman, argues that external restrictions on a state’s actions that rely entirely on coercion are not authoritative and do not denote a truly hierarchical relationship.²⁰ A relationship based entirely on the coercion of one state by another is thus something other than hierarchy – it involves outright domination. Hence, in keeping a party subordinated, the superordinate party must rely not only on the real or perceived threat of coercion, but also on the perceived legitimacy of their authority by both parties in the hierarchical relationship. We must be careful, however, not to entirely discount the role of coercion, which partially underpins any form of hierarchy.

While coercion and material capacity might not be the only or even the most important factors in a hierarchical relationship, hierarchies cannot function in the absence of the superordinate state’s demonstrated or perceived capacity to punish non-compliance on the part of the subordinate state.²¹ In other words, though hierarchies may not simply be reducible to inequality and coercion both are nevertheless an inherent feature of any hierarchical relationship. Authority and coercion are intimately tied together and while a hierarchical authority relationship entails the obligation to obey on the part of the subordinate party, this obligation creates only an expectation of obedience.²² Subordinates can flout the rules and commands of superordinates while still recognising the legitimate right of the superordinate party to issue and enforce commands.²³ A perceived or demonstrated capacity for ­coercion and enforcement is therefore necessary to keep the subordinate party in line.

Equally, however, while the coercive capacity of the superordinate party is an important component of hierarchy, Hobson and Sharman, Lake and Goh are all persuasive in arguing that hierarchy is not simply reducible to coercion or control.²⁴ Social, rather than purely material, factors are crucial to hierarchy formation and reproduction. As Clark argues, hierarchy is ‘a social arrangement characterised by stratification in which, like the angels, there are orders of power and glory and the society is classified in successively subordinate grades’.²⁵ At its core, hierarchy is a social relationship, one in which both the authority to command and the obligation to obey are shaped and informed by the ideas and norms that underpin the hierarchical relationship. As Goh argues, ‘hierarchical social compacts cannot be understood without analysis of the collective norms and beliefs that underpin the legitimacy of such relations’.²⁶

These ideas and norms are what Hobson and Sharman refer to as ‘social logics’: social ordering principles that shape hierarchy formation, fall and reproduction.²⁷ These norms shape and construct the identity of the parties involved in the hierarchical relationship, particularly the identity of states as either superordinate or subordinate parties. The idea of European colonialism as a ‘civilising mission’, for example, underpinned the perceived legitimacy of Europe’s hierarchical relationships with the colonies and protectorates, simultaneously constructing the Europeans as ‘civilisers’ and the various colonies as ‘uncivilised’ or ‘barbaric’.²⁸ Crucially, all parties to the hierarchical relationship recognise these social logics, which underpin and legitimise the authority exercised by the superordinate party.

In sum, we can define hierarchy as a type of social relationship underpinned and informed by social logics, one that involves the exercise of relational authority by a superordinate party that is consented to and recognised as legitimate by all parties to the relationship. The upshot of this definition of hierarchy as a social relationship underpinned by social logics is that hierarchy is possible within international society. The...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: The Hierarchical Society
• 2: Risk and International Society
• 3: The Management of Risk
• 4: Managing Risks in Europe’s Periphery: The European Neighbourhood Policy
• 5: Australia and the Management of Risk in the South Pacific
• 6: Preventing Risks and Changing Regimes: The 2003 Invasion of Iraq
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index