Colonies, semi-sovereigns, and great powers: IGO membership debates and the transition of the international system

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-298
Author(s):  
Ellen J. Ravndal
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
International System ◽  
Transition States ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sovereign Equality

AbstractHow did the transition from a world of empire to a global international system organised around the sovereign state play out? This article traces the transition over the past two centuries through an examination of membership debates in two prominent intergovernmental organisations (IGOs). IGOs are sites of contestation that play a role in the constitution of the international system. Discussions within IGOs reflect and shape broader international norms, and are one mechanism through which the international system determines questions of membership and attendant rights and obligations. The article reveals that IGO membership policies during this period reflected different compromises between the three competing principles of great power privilege, the ‘standard of civilisation’, and universal sovereign equality. The article contributes to Global IR as it confirms that non-Western agency was crucial in bringing about this transition. States in Africa, Asia, and Latin America championed the adoption of the sovereignty criterion. In this, paradoxically, one of the core constitutional norms of the ‘European’ international system – the principle of sovereign equality – was realised at the hands of non-European actors.

scholarly journals Great Power Competition: Lessons from the Past, Implications for the Future

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Vuving
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
Game Of Chicken ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Asymmetric Game

Throughout the 52-century long history of great power competition, human dynamics, technology, and geography are the most consequential and most permanent factors that have shaped the interaction among the great powers. This essay mines the past for lessons about great power competition by examining the structural impact of these factors on the rise and fall of great powers, the balance of power among them, and the character of their relations. In order to aid its analysis, the essay introduces three concepts that have not been discussed in the literature: 1) The system-changers: actors that are not system-makers like the great powers but have the power to change the international system and disrupt the balance of power among the system-makers.2) The strategic structure of great power competition: a structure that emerges from the interaction of the players’ preferences and determines the best strategies for the players as well as the stable outcomes of their game. The essay argues that the Thucydides Trap does not exist in the US-China rivalry because the strategic structure of this rivalry is that of either a Game of Chicken or a Peace-lover’s Dilemma. Using game theory and geopolitics, the essay is able to make long-term predictions and strategy implications for the US-China rivalry.3) The peace-lover’s dilemma: an asymmetric game whose stable outcome is the dominance of the more aggressive player (who prefers its own supremacy to sharing power with the other) over the less aggressive player (who prefers sharing power with the other to its own supremacy), hence this is a dilemma for the game’s peace-loving player.

Aftershocks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
The World ◽  
National Borders

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 829-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minda Holm ◽  
Ole Jacob Sending
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Institutional Rule ◽  
Institutional Infrastructure ◽  
Protective Shield ◽  
Symbolic Structure ◽  
Liberal Thought

AbstractThe symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule coexists with the ongoing frustrated search for recognition in terms of sociopolitical registers. While the first set of rules establishes a protective shield against others, regardless of behaviour, the second set of rules specify rules for behaviour of statehood, which produces a distinct form of misrecognition. States are, at one level, already recognised as sovereign and are granted rights akin to individuals in liberal thought, and yet they are continually misrecognised in their quest to actualise the sovereign agency they associate with statehood. We draw on examples from two contemporary phenomena – fragile states, and assertions of non-interference and sovereignty from the populist right and non-Western great powers, to discuss the misrecognition processes embedded in the bifurcated symbolic structure of sovereignty, and its implications for debates about hierarchy and sovereignty in world affairs.

Great Power and Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Martinez Machain ◽  
Rebecca Kaye ◽  
Jared Oestman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
International System ◽  
Geographic Region ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Minor Powers

Great powers have traditionally played a major role in the study of foreign policy. From a variety of work on foreign policy analysis, it is known that great powers are more active in their foreign policy than other states in the international system are. Whether the actions are disbursing foreign aid, creating alliances, conflict involvement, or others, studies will often control for great power status, with the underlying expectation being that major powers will be more likely to utilize these foreign policy tools. In fact, when considering relevant dyads in quantitative studies of foreign policy analysis, states have to be contiguous for the dyad to be considered relevant, but an exception is made for dyads containing at least one major power, given the ability of great powers to project their power beyond their borders. Key literature on the foreign policy behavior of great powers discusses different ways of defining great powers. In particular, the debate over defining great power status has focused on whether a great power should be defined solely on its physical capabilities, or also on intangible factors, such as its foreign policy interests or whether the state is recognized as a great power by others in the international system. Further, there are questions of whether great powers have to be military powers or whether economic superiority is enough to classify a state as a great power. There is also the issue of regional powers: states that are clearly military, economic, and political leaders within a limited geographic region, but not at the global level. Should these states be considered great powers, or should that classification be reserved for global powers? The literature on great-power foreign policy also discusses cooperative and conflictual behaviors of great powers in the international system. It addresses great power war, focusing on how they are more conflict prone than minor powers, and reviews the issues that drive great powers to engage in conflict, such as positional issues and the intent to shape the international system to their liking. It also discusses a variety of foreign policy actions, both coercive and cooperative, that major powers are more likely to engage in than their minor-power counterparts. In addition, there is much work done on the relationships between great powers and between great powers and minor powers, stressing the competitive nature of major-power interactions and the trade-off between economic and military security and policy concessions that defines major-minor power interactions.

Ethics and Sovereignty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Weinert
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Literature ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Power And Authority

Literature concentrated on sovereignty’s location laid the groundwork for the distinctive sort of ethical detachment that has characterized sovereignty in international relations (IR). While it is customary to refer to sovereign absolutism as linking a logic of prerogative with sovereignty, mainstream IR theory has reproduced its own variation on the theme and done little until recently to decouple the two. Yet beginning in the late 1970s, the literature began to entertain the idea that interdependence and globalization impede, constrain, corrode, or diminish the core assumptions of sovereignty: the centralization of power and authority, the supremacy of the state, the state’s capabilities to achieve its objectives, and the degree of permissiveness afforded by an anarchical system. Put differently, the space within which sovereignty could operate unencumbered rapidly diminished in size and scope, and the sovereign state, by losing control over various functions, was becoming incoherent at minimum, and irrelevant at maximum. If these arguments focused on a narrow question, then a new literature emerged in the mid to late 1990s that focused on, and questioned, sovereignty as authority. Moreover, the debates about globalization underscored sovereignty’s disjunctive nature. Yet by linking it so closely with material structures and factors, the literature generally elided consideration of the constitutive effect of international norms on sovereignty and the ways the institution of sovereignty has changed over time.

From Versailles to the Kellogg-Briand Pact: Prohibiting and Justifying Aggression in the Interbellum

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-244
Author(s):  
Jochen von Bernstorff
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
New Instruments ◽  
Self Defence

Abstract: The article is a historical re-description of international legal debates concerning the ius ad bellum in the Interwar period (1919–1936). Using a core/periphery heuristic, it is demonstrated that the normative changes created by the League Covenant and the Kellogg-Briand Pact were being drafted and interpreted by the great powers in a way that still allowed them to justify military interventions in their peripheries. Even military violence between Western states could only be partially outlawed by these instruments. Legal uncertainties produced during the drafting of the new instruments could readily be exploited by the Western dominated international legal discourse. And yet, with the principle of sovereign equality on the rise in the Interbellum, and the battle of semi-periphery governments against the ‘standard of civilisation', traditional justifications for military violence came under increasing pressure. At that very moment, international lawyers in the core introduced a broader understanding of self-defence, gradually replacing former justifications for military interventions both within the core and in the peripheries of Western powers. All of this taken together in practice arguably consumed a substantial part of the alleged ‘progress' made by international legal pacifism in the Interbellum.

Systemic Politics and the Origins of Great Power Conflict

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEAR F. BRAUMOELLER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Related Activity ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Spiral Model ◽  
Proximate Explanation

Systemic theories of international politics rarely predict conflict short of cataclysmic systemic wars, and dyadic theories of conflict lack systemic perspective. This article attempts to bridge the gap by introducing a two-step theory of conflict among Great Powers. In the first stage, states engage in a dynamic, ongoing process of managing the international system, which inevitably produces tensions among them. In the second stage, relative levels of security-related activity determine how and when those tensions erupt into disputes. A test of the theory on Great Power conflicts from the nineteenth century supports the argument and, moreover, favors the deterrence model over the spiral model as a proximate explanation of conflict in the second stage.

scholarly journals Sovereignty at the Extremes: Micro-States in World Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
JC Sharman
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Economic Viability ◽  
Systemic Effects ◽  
Functional Explanations ◽  
Functional Capacities ◽  
International Anarchy

Micro-states illustrate deep changes in the international system obscured by scholars’ traditional focus on great powers. Logically, the nature and systemic effects of international anarchy should be most apparent in relation to the smallest and weakest states, and least apparent in relation to great powers. Focusing on micro-states suggests a permissive contemporary international system facilitating the proliferation and survival of states independent of their military and functional capacities. Micro-states’ lack of great power allies illustrates the irrelevance of military threats under anarchy, while the presence of an international economic safety net attenuates problems of economic viability. The lack of association between smallness and delegating sovereignty questions functional explanations of hierarchy. Instead, varying micro-states strategies of à la carte hierarchy and selling sovereign prerogatives demonstrate that the current international system presents even its smallest and weakest members with choices rather than imperatives.

A non-sovereign modernity: attempts to engineer stability in the Balkans 1820–90

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER HALDÉN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Events ◽  
International Stability ◽  
Power Strategies ◽  
Engineer Stability ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractSocial theory almost invariably equates modernity with the sovereign state. This equation must be nuanced because the modern era and modern strategies of international stability have contained non-sovereign units. In the nineteenth century, the Great Powers tried to create international stability by engineering forms of rule in Europe. These strategies built on distinctively modern ideas: the possibility of radically breaking with the past, redesigning political organisations, and actively controlling political events through rational planning. Throughout the century the Great Powers alternated between creating non-sovereign units and creating sovereign units as instruments in these stabilising strategies. The degree of trust between the Great Powers accounts for the shift between the two strategies: they tended to create non-sovereign units when mutual trust was high and sovereign ones when trust was low. This article analyses Great Power strategies of designing forms of rule in the Balkans between 1820 and 1878. Like in previous centuries, nineteenth-century Europe actually consisted of two parallel but connected systems: the egalitarian system of sovereign states and a system of non-sovereign entities. Non-sovereign units disappeared only late in the century and this process was affected by the increasing rivalry and mistrust between the sovereign states.

Balancing in Neorealism

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Parent ◽  
Sebastian Rosato
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Military Innovations ◽  
Power Balancing

Does neorealism offer a convincing account of great power balancing behavior? Many scholars argue that it does not. This conclusion rests on a misunderstanding of neorealist theory and an erroneous reading of the evidence. Properly specified, neorealism holds that great powers place an overriding emphasis on the need for self-help. This means that they rely relentlessly both on arming and on imitating the successful military practices of their peers to ensure their security. At the same time, they rarely resort to alliances and treat them with skepticism. There is abundant historical evidence to support these claims. Since 1816, great powers have routinely achieved an effective balance in military capabilities with their relevant competitors and promptly copied the major military innovations of the period. Case studies show that these outcomes are the product of states' efforts to ensure security against increasingly capable rivals. Meanwhile, the diplomatic record yields almost no examples of firm peacetime balancing coalitions over the past 200 years. When alliances have formed, great powers have generally doubted the reliability of their allies and of their opponents' allies. Thus neorealism provides a solid foundation for explaining great power balancing behavior.

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