Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:47:38.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anomaly and commonplace in European political expansion: realist and institutional accounts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

David Strang
David Strang
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Get access

Abstract

The global expansion of the European state system suggests strong connections between political “life chances” and international status. Polities recognized as sovereign within the Western international community are much less likely than unrecognized polities to be colonized and are much less likely than dependencies to merge or dissolve. These variations in stability are difficult to understand through balance-of-power politics. They may be more plausibly explained through the institutional structure of the state system and, in particular, the organization of the system as a community of mutual recognition. Sovereign members of this community are treated in fundamentally different ways than are those seen as outside Western state society or as the dependent possessions of sovereign states.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , Spring 1991 , pp. 143 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I thank Ronald Jepperson, Stephen D. Krasner, John W. Meyer, Robin Stryker, Ann Swidler, and Nancy B. Tuma for comments on earlier versions of this article. The research was supported in part by a MacArthur Dissertation Grant under the auspices of the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control.

1. The classic account of European expansion from a Marxist perspective is Lenin's, Vladimir IlichImperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (London: Martin Lawrence, 1933)Google Scholar. For a periphery-based analysis, see Frank, Andre Gunder, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” in Rhodes, R., ed., Imperialism and Underdevelopment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. 4–17Google Scholar.

2. See Kratochwil, Friedrich and Ruggie, John G., “International Organization: A State of the Art on the Art of the State,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 27–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a variety of approaches to international regimes, see the contributions to Krasner, Stephen D., ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar

3. See Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Harper, 1964)Google Scholar; Morgenthau, Hans, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1978)Google Scholar; and Aron, Raymond, Inter-national Relations: A Theory of Peace and War, 5th ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973)Google Scholar. Among the major neorealist works are Waltz's, KennethTheory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar and Gilpin's, RobertWar and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For a view that casts classic realism much closer to the institutional perspective described in this article, see Ashley, Richard K., “The Poverty of Neorealism,” International Organization 38 (Spring 1984), pp. 225–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. A liberal view begins with the same premises but instead emphasizes the potential for cooperation. See, for example, Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar; and Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

6. Grieco, Joseph M., “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” International Organization 42 (Summer 1988), pp. 498–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics. For a decision-making rule that includes both realist and institutional elements, see Kaplan, Morton, System and Process in International Politics (New York: Wiley, 1962)Google Scholar.

8. Gulick, Edward V., Europe's Classical Balance of Power (Binghamton, N.Y.: Vail-Baillou Press, 1955)Google Scholar.

9. Keohane, Robert O., “International Institutions: Two Approaches,” International Studies Quarterly 32 (10 1988), pp. 379–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. For institutional approaches stressing other processes, see March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in American Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78 (09 1984), pp. 734–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, Oran R., “International Regimes: Toward a New Theory of Institutions,” World Politics 39 (10 1986), pp. 104–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Krasner, Stephen D., “Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective,” Comparative Political Studies 21 (Spring 1988), pp. 66–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a sociological view, see Meyer, John W., Boli, John, and Thomas, George M., “Ontology and Rationalization in the Western Cultural Account,” in Thomas, George M. et al. , eds., Institutional Structure (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1987), pp. 12–37Google Scholar.

11. Young, , “International Regimes,” p. 107Google Scholar.

12. See Rawls, John, “Two Concepts of Rules,” Philosophical Reviews, vol. 64, 1955, pp. 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Keohane, “International Institutions.”

13. March, and Olsen, , “The New Institutionalism,” p. 741Google Scholar.

14. Keohane, , “International Institutions,” p. 390Google Scholar.

15. Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar.

16. See Ruggie, John Gerard, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” World Politics 36 (Spring 1983), pp. 261–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, “Sovereignty”; and Keohane, “International Institutions.”

17. For conceptualizations of the state system as a society, see Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wight, Martin, Systems of States (Leicester, U.K.: Leicester University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

18. See Kratochwil, Friedrich, “Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System,” World Politics 39 (10 1986), pp. 27–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a detailed account of a quite different conception of states and state systems, see Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

19. See Meyer, John W., “The World Polity and the Authority of the Nation-State,” in Bergeson, A., ed., Studies of the Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1980), pp. 109–38Google Scholar; and Krasner, Stephen D., Structural Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

20. This is most clear in nineteenth-century writings on international law. For example, as Hall argued in A Treatise on International Law, “It is scarcely necessary to point out that as international law is a product of the special civilisation of modern Europe, and forms a highly artificial system of which the principles cannot be supposed to be understood or recognized by countries differently civilised, such states only can be presumed to be subject to it as are inheritors of the civilisation.… But states outside European civilisation must formally enter into the circle of law-governed countries. They must do something with the acquiescence of the latter, or some of them, which amounts to an acceptance of the law in its entirety beyond all possibility of misconstruction.” See Hall, W. E., A Treatise on International Law, 8th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 47–48Google Scholar; cited in Wight, , Systems of States, p. 115Google Scholar.

21. Weber, Max, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 58Google Scholar.

22. James, Alan, Sovereign Statehood (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986)Google Scholar.

23. Oppenheim, L. F. L., International Law, 8th ed. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1955), p. 125Google Scholar.

24. For descriptions of the ceremonies used to claim sovereignty, see Keller, Arthur S., Lissitzyn, Oliver J., and Mann, Frederick J., Creation of Rights of Sovereignty Through Symbolic Acts, 1400–1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938)Google Scholar. For the opposing argument that Western states implicitly recognized non-Western polities through treaty making, see Alexandrowicz, Charles Henry, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies: Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967)Google Scholar.

25. Lauterpacht, Hersch, Recognition in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947), p. 381Google Scholar.

26. See Pratt, Julius W., America's Colonial Experiment (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950)Google Scholar.

27. See Henige, David, Colonial Governors (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Banks, Arthur S., ed., Political Handbook of the World, 1987 (Binghamton, N.Y.: CSA Publications, 1987)Google Scholar; and Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin, Diplomatic Exchange Data, 1815–1970 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1985)Google Scholar.

28. Jackson, Robert and Rosberg, Carl, “Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics 35 (10 1982), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Stinchcombe introduced the notion of the “liability of newness.” See Stinchcombe, Arthur L., “Social Structure and Organizations,” in March, James G., ed., Handbook of Organizations (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 153–93Google Scholar. For empirical demonstrations, see Freeman, John, Carroll, Glenn R., and Hannan, Michael T., “The Liabilty of Newness: Age Dependence in Organizational Death Rates,” American Sociological Review 48 (10 1983), pp. 692–710CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Singh, Jitendra V., Tucker, David J., and House, Robert J., “Organizational Legitimacy and the Liability of Newness,” Administrative Science Quarterly 31 (06 1986), pp. 171–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. See Parry, J. H., The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940)Google Scholar.

31. My discussion of Katanga's attempted secession is based on the following accounts: Hoskyns, Catherine, The Congo Since Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Gerard-Libois, Jules, Katanga Secession (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

32. Keltie, J. Scott, ed., The Statesman's Year-Book, 1900 (London: Macmillan, 1900)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Ibid.

34. See Langer, William L., The Diplomacy of Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1935)Google Scholar.

35. According to Tilly, there were on the order of five hundred European polities in the sixteenth century, while there are about twenty-five today. See Tilly, Charles, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Tilly, Charles, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 15Google Scholar.