International Hierarchies Research Articles

A brotherhood of nations: Imagining the nation-based order during the Springtime of Nations (1848)

Abstract Much like nations, the nation-based order and the domestic and international hierarchies it produces are imagined. Benedict Anderson and scholars in Historical International Relations have frequently approached nationalism and nations as a horizontal division of the world. By contrast, this article explores the imagined hierarchies within and between nations during the 1848 Springtime of Nations. Through an examination of fraternal images found in a variety of textual and visual sources, I investigate how the European national imaginary of 1848 translated into the nation-based order and its corresponding domestic and international hierarchies. The collapse of the 1848 Revolutions brought about a crisis in the national imaginary. The revolutionary fraternity was co-opted in a distorted form by dynastic regimes and opposed by socialists advocating for the international brotherhood of workers. The Springtime of Nations, with its successes and failures, was a pivotal chapter in creating, shaping, legitimising, and challenging the nascent nation-based order.

Embodied Geopolitics: The Discursive Construction of Refugee Men and Masculinities in Turkey

ABSTRACT A new wave of displaced people from Afghanistan arriving in Turkey in August-September 2021 generated public debates about how the country would protect its borders while continuing to face the ‘problem’ posed by more than 3 million displaced Syrians. Much of these debates centred on refugee men and scrutinised their bodies and bodily acts to produce them as Other. This article analyses how the racialised and gendered depictions of refugee men in Turkey discursively produce geopolitical spatial hierarchies. Our analysis includes political leaders’ speeches, news articles, and opinion pieces published in mainstream media outlets and social media about displaced people from Syria and Afghanistan since 2016. We build on and contribute to feminist geopolitics and refugee studies by focusing on refugee men and masculinities, teasing out the contradictions in the geopolitical narratives centred on refugee men’s bodies, and analysing their implications for representing civilisational hierarchies. Using the concept of embodied geopolitics, we show how the dominant anti-refugee discourse in Turkey operates through a series of contradictory -but eventually complementary- geopolitical depictions of refugee men’s bodies, appearance, and behaviour that simultaneously masculinise and feminise them. These portrayals present refugee men either as fighters or cowards, as modern or backward. We argue that gendered and racialised refugee bodies animate geopolitical narratives and demonstrate that bodies are not simply territories with fixed meanings. Instead, they are constantly and simultaneously inscribed with multiple meanings that operate together and, ultimately, produce international hierarchies, ethnic boundaries, and the modern/backward dualism.

Domination for the Rest? Creating and Contesting Secondary State-Led International Hierarchies

AbstractExisting literature on international hierarchies has focused on great powers, hitherto overlooking those hierarchies led by secondary states. Secondary states lack the capabilities and geostrategic reach of their great power counterparts but nevertheless seek to create subordinate relationships in their immediate regions. We argue that in doing so secondary states draw on strategic toolkits that involve the creation of shared communities and the intensification of material dependencies between superordinate and subordinate. However, more so than great powers, secondary states do not get things all their own way. Recognizing the agency of even the weakest of states, we further contend that potential subordinates employ a range of resistance techniques—which we call firewalls and dissonance strategies. We elaborate on these strategies, and conclude our argument, by applying the theoretical model presented here to the novel case of the Sunshine Policy—a decade of inter-Korean hierarchy formation, contestation, and resistance from 1998 to 2008 in which we claim that South Korea attempted, and ultimately stalled, in its efforts to establish itself in a hierarchical relationship with North Korea.

Unpacking postcolonial and masculine anxieties: Hungary and Turkey’s responses to the EU’s handling of the 2015–2016 refugee “crisis”

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine the Hungarian and Turkish responses to the EU’s handling of the 2015 refugee “crisis” through a postcolonial feminist IR framework. Drawing on hypermasculinity, we argue that both countries utilise migration to overcome their postcolonial and masculine anxieties by confronting their positions within the international hierarchies. Our examination of policy statements and speeches by Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan between 2015 and 2016 reveals three masculinised responses. First, both leaders portray themselves as acting out of paternal authority, while painting the EU as weak or inhumane. Second, they depict the EU as incompetent and their countries as competent providers of security. Third, they present themselves as protectors of European values, and the EU as in need of protection. These rhetorics suggest that both leaders used the “crisis” to challenge the current international hierarchy. Despite this, we argue that they are only concerned with their countries’ rankings within the hierarchy, not the system itself. Our postcolonial feminist reading of the “crisis” reveals that these masculinised framings are in fact counterproductive and only serve to confirm both Hungary and Turkey’s positions at the bottom of the international hierarchies, and their subordination to the EU as the EU’s others.

Imperial power, anti-imperial resistance, and the shaping of international hierarchies: Lessons from 1930s Persia – ERRATUM

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Imperial power, anti-imperial resistance, and the shaping of international hierarchies: Lessons from 1930s Persia

AbstractThis article explores how relations of both domination and resistance have been involved in the constitution of international hierarchies. Focusing on events arising from the Persian government’s 1932 cancellation of the D’Arcy oil concession, it argues that while Western-dominated international hierarchies have proved resilient, some aspects of these hierarchical relationships have been altered by episodes of resistance such as the one under examination in this article. The case study has been chosen because of its ability to highlight the interwar years as an important period of transition to a new world order, as well as the significance of Persia as one of the few non-Western countries that remained uncolonised at that time. The article revisits detailed historical documents from the BP Archives and the National Archives to show how the events of the 1930s oil dispute contributed to the emergence of shifts in the material, legal, and social hierarchies of the interwar period, while nevertheless reinforcing the existence of hierarchies overall. It shows how multilateral diplomacy replaced overt military intimidation, the framework of international law broadened, and peripheral countries found strength in numbers. Finally, the article considers the longer-term resilience of the hierarchical international system.

The aesthetics of intercultural method: from process to procession in new Indonesian and Indo-Australian dance

ABSTRACT This article examines how three dances featuring Indonesian artists and commissioned for Melbourne's 2020 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts staged their method of creation in ways that make explicit core features of cultural production in inter-Asia contexts. In The Seen and Unseen, by Kamila Andini and Ida Ayu Wayan Satyani, a self-contained world is best understood as participating in a much longer process of creation. Lucy Guerin Inc and Ensemble Tikoro's Metal is distinctive for staging the processual, integrating the common intercultural trope of narrating the encounter between its collaborators inventively into its structure. Garin Nugroho's The Planet—A Lament is best understood processionally: an event that began before its participants enter the stage, and carries on after the curtain comes down. As such, the “method” of these dances sets local embodied knowledges to work on international stages, expresses the negotiation of domestic and international hierarchies, and gives new forms to trans-regional relations.

Diplomacy in the Woods: Nature, Hunting, Masculinity, and Soviet Diplomacy under N.S. Khrushchev

Abstract Analyzing several documentary films and other sources through the lens of gender and feminist theory, this article explores the role of hunting and nature in Soviet diplomatic relationships. The article views diplomacy as a masculine space in which diplomatic negotiations relied on successful displays of toughness and the exhibition of prowess and agility. These skills were best demonstrated not in the official corridors of power but in settings imbued with symbolic meanings associated with masculinity, such as nature. The latter often served as a homosocial space where power was displayed and reconstituted through ritualistic performances of heroic masculinity. Such rituals as hunting sought to accomplish several goals. They promoted the male bonding that formed the basis of a preferred personal style of diplomacy and allowed Soviet apparatchiks to display marksmanship skills and a level of physical prowess that would present them to their foreign counterparts as potent leaders and desired allies. More importantly, as with other performative rituals of masculinity, Soviet diplomatic hunts produced and reproduced masculinity – and with it, power – and served strategically to assert or challenge international hierarchies, shape new and reaffirm faltering alliances, and demonstrate the agility and potency of the Soviet system to visiting state leaders.

The liberal international order and the global south: a view from Latin America

The contributions to this special issue take a Global South perspective rooted in the long experiences of Latin American countries with international organisation, laws and norms. Contributors explore how the weaker, poorer, and presumed subordinate Latin American states have contributed to and challenged the construction and development of today’s Liberal International Order (LIO). The articles in this special issue ask what Latin American experiences in different domains and historical periods can tell us about the LIO as it now fractures and reconstitutes. The core argument among these essays is that, despite inherent contradictions and tensions, Latin American engagements with the LIO have attempted to level the playing field and prevent the reinforcement of existing international hierarchies. The contributions to this special issue demonstrate that Latin American actors were not mere norm-takers and passive supporters of the LIO. Latin American actors have often sought to hold the leaders of the LIO to their own promises. They have insisted that the rules of a rules-based order should apply not just to the poor, weak or indebted but to the rich, strong and powerful as well.

Lost in the Past: Emotions, History and International Relations

Lost in the Past: Emotions, History and International Relations

Comparing the U.S.–Colombia Partnership to the U.S.–U.K. Special Relationship

This article characterises the US–Colombia Partnership (USCP) by comparing it to the U.S.–U.K. Special Relationship (USUKSR). For this purpose, both dyads are graded within Lake’s typology of international hierarchies. Then Xu’s three minimum criteria for SRs – and a fourth criterion derived from Harnisch – are applied to the USCP, with references to the USUKSR. In the security dimension, the USCP could be graded as a weak (soft) protectorate under Plan Colombia, and it might be still today. The USUKSR is seen heading toward a weak protectorate due to Britain’s even closer post-Brexit alignment to the U.S. (by launching an Indo-Pacific tilt, clinching the AUKUS pact, and helping to broker a broader anti-China coalition, while remaining the staunchest NATO ally). In the economic dimension, the USUKSR until recently could be rated as market exchange, but now it has been approaching an economic zone (as Britain is courting America for more trade and investment, while shedding Huawei, shelving a bilateral FTA with China, and seeking CPTPP accession). The USCP classifies as an economic zone, since the U.S. is still Colombia’s largest export market and preferred investor, and Colombia has been very cautious with China (refraining from an FTA, and from joining the BRI). The USCP (by combining a weak protectorate with an economic zone) is rated as an informal empire, while the USUKSR may be close to it. The USCP is unlikely to become an SR, because U.S. substituted Colombian governance functions are focused on domestic security, and the U.S. public does not judge Colombia positively, and is far from regarding it as an ally. The paper ends with a note on the dominant partner.

Inequality Within omnivorous knowledge: Distribution of Jeopardy! geography questions, 1984-2020

• A database of 40,153 geography questions, including contestant answers, was compiled over 37 years of the popular American television trivia game show Jeopardy! , from 1984-2020. • Wealthier, larger, Western countries were more likely to be the subjects of Jeopardy! questions. Questions about peripheral and developing nations were relatively less frequent. • Although questions about developing countries were infrequent, due to scarcity of information associated with such places, such questions tended to be relatively difficult and valuable. • Jeopardy! promotes cultural omnivorousness and broad-based knowledge. International hierarchies in complexity and representation within Jeopardy! questions reveal that even omnivorous, generalist knowledge systems can exhibit specialism and bias.

Driving liberal change? Global performance indices as a system of normative stratification in liberal international order

The existing literature on Global Performance Indices (GPIs) is mostly dominated by unit-level analyses focused on specifying the relevant properties of the GPIs and the motivations of state actors in being influenced by GPIs. This article advances a systemic approach, which conceives of GPIs as collectively constituting a system of normative stratification in International Relations (IR). By bringing together the literature on GPIs with the relevant IR literatures on international hierarchies and status-seeking, we identify the structural attributes of the GPI-based system of stratification, how these structural attributes shape the distribution of normative status positions among states, and how this distribution is likely to condition the pursuit of status by states. In particular, we argue that the disaggregated structure and relative ranking of states, respectively, generate status ambiguity and immobility, which both dissuade states from seeking higher moral status through improving their scores in the existing indices. We illustrate the patterns of status ambiguity and immobility present in the GPI-based system of stratification through an empirical analysis of the scores and rank positions of the United States, European Union (EU) members, and “rising powers” in five different indices in the past decade.

In the club: how and why central bankers created a hierarchy of sovereign borrowers, c. 1988–2007

From roughly 1988 to 2007, global banks faced strong regulatory incentives to lend to members of the OECD and those of the IMF’s General Arrangements to Borrow (GAB), along with disincentives to lend to countries that belonged to neither of these groups. The culprit was the Basel Accord, also known as Basel I, a piece of banking regulation designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) to regulate global banks’ capital levels. Why did the BCBS create a ‘club’ of riskless sovereign borrowers, and why did it use OECD and GAB membership to do so? Relying on the archives of the BCBS, I first argue that the Basel Committee chose to design a club in response to European Community (EC) policies, which threatened a number of non-EC states on the Committee. Second, I argue that the BCBS chose to define the group through OECD membership because its members embodied a key set of criteria that it associated with creditworthiness. I conclude by outlining the implications of these findings for our understanding of the BCBS, as well as for our models of how central banks construct international hierarchies.

The International Indian Ocean Expedition and the Pursuit of Science in the Developing World

Between 2015 and 2020, UNESCO and oceanographers who study the Indian Ocean sponsored an international expedition to pursue current research topics about the region. Known as the Second International Indian Ocean Expedition, the project recapitulated an effort that had begun 56 years earlier. The International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIEO) ran from 1959 to 1965 and was the first major oceanographic expedition to focus on a developing world region. With 22 participating countries, the IIEO pursued large‐scale, collaborative science as state formation began after the collapse of European empires. The wave of decolonizations in Africa and Asia after the Second World War was more than just the refusal of alien rule followed by the formation of new nation‐states [1]. It was a moment when the citizens of newly independent countries, including India, the most active developing‐world participant in the IIOE, sought to recalibrate international hierarchies. As African and Asian politicians and thinkers shaped international institutions to their benefit, including the United Nations, of which UNESCO was a part, developing world scientists also expanded their say in the pursuit of science [2]. Oceanography was a young field, often practiced minimally in wealthy countries, but pursued vigorously by India in the years after independence. This effort occurred in the context of a Cold War pursued by the primary funders of the IIOE, the US and USSR, that eventually undercut international cooperation in science but did not squelch Indian institution‐building in oceanography. The IIOE, then, offers a window into the historical geography of science in the postwar period and into the under‐recognized agency of scientists outside the West in creating regional science infrastructure.

Review: Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, by Adom Getachew

Review: <i>Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination</i>, by Adom Getachew

Self-Determination between World and Nation

Abstract Rejecting the rigid dichotomy between anticolonial nationalism and postnational solidarity, Adom Getachew's Worldmaking after Empire argues that anticolonial leaders in the Caribbean and Africa did not outright reject the nation-state in their quest for self-determination. Instead, they internationalized the nation-state through the construction of new constituted powers that linked national sovereignties together in global juridical, political, and economic bodies. This essay explores a neglected question in this account: What were the constituent powers—the underlying sources of authority —that corresponded to these new global institutions? What, in other words, was the constituency of self-determination? Focusing on C. L. R. James and W. E. B. Du Bois, Dahl shows how anticolonial constituencies are at once the referent and effect of claims for self-determination. For James and Du Bois, politically delineating the constituency of self-determination is central to the institutional project of securing nondomination against international hierarchies of empire and enslavement.

The ‘Global South’ as a relational category – global hierarchies in the production of law and legal pluralism

The ‘Global South’ often functions as a shorthand for countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America that differ significantly in terms of economic trajectories, institutional arrangements, and everyday political life. The significant diversity notwithstanding, I argue that the Global South constitutes a useful macro-category of high epistemological value. Rather than identifying a neat set of clearly demarcated properties that could be found everywhere in the Global South but nowhere else, I argue that ‘the Global South’ is a relational category that sensitises us for the historically grown marginalisations within international hierarchies and their epistemological implications. In this article, I focus on the role of law within global relationships of subjugation to show how legal developments in the Global North and South have historically been entangled in highly uneven ways. In the Global South, these entanglements have strongly affected the development of state and non-state law, giving rise to a particular kind of legal pluralism in which the state is only one among many possible sources of legal reasoning. Unequal entanglements notwithstanding, there is a persistent (though often unacknowledged) legal agency of actors in the Global South, as I illustrate with reference to one manifestation of such agency in Bangladesh.

Found in translation: the global constitution of the modern international order

AbstractThis paper brings the notion of translation into dialogue with the growing literature on international hierarchies and the historical origins of the modern international order. Leveraging on the writings of Karl Marx, I draw parallels between the exchange of commodities and the translation of linguistic signs in order to unmask the inequalities and asymmetries that pervade the practice of translation. I then deploy these theoretical insights to illuminate the global constitution of the modern international order. In this Marx-inspired reading, the modern international order is cast as the ‘universal equivalent’ that has crystallized out of the asymmetries and contradictions that pervaded the global political economy of conceptual exchange in the long 19thcentury. As universal equivalent, the modern international order effectively functions as the socially recognized ‘metalanguage’ that undergirds the miracle of global translatability and makes international/interlingual relations possible on a global scale. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the analysis for the future of international/interlingual hierarchies and world order.

Yiddish Buenos Aires and the Struggle to Leave the Margins

ABSTRACT Yiddish culture developed in Argentina within the context of a self-perception that figured Buenos Aires as a marginal and peripheral locale on the global Yiddish map. Against this backdrop, Argentine Yiddish culturalists argued for the strengthening of local Yiddish culture with a goal of elevating Buenos Aires's status within the international hierarchies of Yiddish culture. Buenos Aires indeed emerged in the 1920s as a producer of Yiddish cultural contents, maintained networks of international cultural contacts with other Yiddish centers, financially supported Eastern European Yiddish establishments, and hoped that these contacts would allow for solving Buenos Aires reputation problems. The pre-World War II preoccupation with the status of Buenos Aires as a center of Yiddish culture provided a basis upon which post-Holocaust discourse of Argentine Jewish responsibility for the maintenance of Yiddish culture was constructed.