¹ See Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edn (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2002)Google Scholar; Clark, Ian, Hegemony in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Keene, Edward, ‘International hierarchy and the origins of the modern practice of intervention’, Review of International Studies, 39:5 (2013), pp. 1077–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² While secondary institutions denote international regimes and organisations, the notion of primary institutions refers to fundamental and constitutive sets of rules and practices in English School theorising. For the distinction between primary and secondary institutions, see Buzan, Barry, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ch. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ For an overview, see Caroline Fehl and Katja Freistein, ‘Institutional Mechanisms of Global Inequality Reproduction: SFB 882 “From Heterogeneities to Inequalities”’, Working Paper Series, No. 37 (Bielefeld, 2014), pp. 5–11, 16–19. See also Fehl, Caroline, ‘Unequal power and the institutional design of global governance: the case of arms control’, Review of International Studies, 40:3 (2014), pp. 505–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pouliot, Vincent, ‘Setting status in stone: the negotiation of interational institutional privileges’, in Paul, T. V., Larson, Deborah Welch, and Wohlforth, William C. (eds), Status in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 192–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mattern, Janice Bially and Zarakol, Ayşe, ‘Hierarchies in world politics’, International Organization, 70:3 (2016), pp. 623–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pouliot, Vincent, International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ See notably Keene, Edward, ‘The naming of powers’, Cooperation and Conflict, 48:2 (2013), pp. 268–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Keene, Edward, ‘The standard of “civilization”, the expansion thesis and the 19th-century international social space’, Millennium, 42:3 (2014), pp. 651–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ See notably Bull, The Anarchical Society; Simpson, Gerry, Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Donnelly, Jack, ‘Sovereign inequalities and hierarchy in anarchy: American power and international society’, European Journal of International Relations, 12:2 (2006), pp. 139–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ See notably Koremenos, Barbara, Lipson, Charles, and Snidal, Duncan, ‘The rational design of international institutions’, International Organization, 55:4 (2001), pp. 761–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Blake, Daniel J. and Payton, Autumn L., ‘Balancing design objectives: Analyzing new data on voting rules in intergovernmental organizations’, Review of International Organisations, 10:3 (2015), pp. 377–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ See, for example, Krisch, Nico, ‘International law in times of hegemony: Unequal power and the shaping of the international order’, The European Journal of International Law, 16:3 (2005), pp. 369–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurrell, Andrew, On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurd, Ian, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)Google Scholar and Paul, T. V., Larson, Deborah Welch, and Wohlforth, William C. (eds), Status in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Mitrany, David, The Progress of International Government (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1933), pp. 46, 84Google Scholar.

⁹ See Bially Mattern and Zarakol, ‘Hierarchies in world politics’, pp. 627–9, who label this perspective the ‘narrow conception’ of hierarchy. This understanding of hierarchy notably characterises Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979)Google Scholar; Bull, The Anarchical Society; Donnelly, ‘Sovereign inequalities and hierarchy in anarchy’; and Lake, David A., Hierarchy in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ This perspective notably informs Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States and Donnelly, ‘Sovereign inequalities and hierarchy in anarchy’. See also Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 88 and Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 35.

¹¹ See Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, ‘The rational design of international institutions’ and Blake and Payton, ‘Balancing design objectives’.

¹² See Larson, Deborah Welch and Shevchenko, Alexei, ‘Status seekers: Chinese and Russian responses to U.S. primacy’, International Security, 34:4 (2010), pp. 63–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Paul, Welch Larson, and Wohlforth (eds), Status in World Politics.

¹³ This narrow perspective also informs Fehl's (‘Unequal power’) differentiation of three forms of institutionalised inequality – hierarchy, exclusivity, and informality – in arms control negotiations.

¹⁴ Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 36. See also Wight, Martin, Systems of States (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), p. 42Google Scholar and Keene, ‘The naming of powers’.

¹⁵ See Keene, ‘The naming of powers’.

¹⁶ See Keene, ‘The standard of “civilization”’. For the history of the standard of civilisation, see also Anghie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ For an overview, see Bially Mattern and Zarakol, ‘Hierarchies in world politics’, pp. 629–31.

¹⁸ Pouliot, ‘Setting status in stone’, p. 195. See also Guzzini, Stefano, ‘The concept of power: a constructivist analysis’, Millennium, 33:3 (2005), pp. 495–521CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ This multidimensionality has been emphasised by Edward Keene (using a neo-Weberian approach) and Vincent Pouliot (drawing on Bourdieu). See Keene, ‘The standard of “civilization”’, pp. 663–6 and Pouliot, International Pecking Orders. See also Bukovansky, Mlada et al. , Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ See Pouliot, ‘Setting status in stone’.

²¹ See besides Fehl and Freistein, ‘Institutional Mechanisms’ also Caroline Fehl and Katja Freistein, Institutionalised Power: How International Organisations Produce Inequality, paper presented at the ISA Conference in Baltimore, 21–25 February 2017, pp. 17–25.

²² For instance, Keene focuses on the level of primary institutions and international order and Pouliot (International Pecking Orders) on the reproduction of ‘pecking orders’ through multilateral practices. Moreover, the literature on governance by numbers / indicators focuses on the effects of quantifying governance practices of secondary institutions on patterns of stratification. See, for instance, Broome, André and Quirk, Joel, ‘Governing the world at a distance: the practice of global benchmarking’, Review of International Studies, 41:5 (2015), pp. 819–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ For an overview over sociological theories of stratification, see Grusky, David B. (ed.), Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective, 3^rd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Sociologists sometimes speak synonymously of social inequality. It should be noted that sociologists often treat individuals – and not states – as basis of global inequality studies. See Therborn, Göran (ed.), Inequalities of the World (London: Verso, 2006)Google Scholar.

²⁴ See Bourdieu, Pierre, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979)Google Scholar and Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie: Fünfte, revidierte Auflage, besorgt von Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972), pp. 531–40Google Scholar. For a discussion on how Bourdieu and Weber can enrich English School research on the stratification of international society and its expansion, see Keene, ‘The standard of “civilization”’, pp. 659–63.

²⁵ Sauder, Michael, Lynn, Freda, and Podolny, Joel M., ‘Status: Insights from organizational sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology, 38 (2012), 267–83 (p. 277)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Fehl and Freistein (Institutionalised Power) similarly focus on practices of categorisation to grasp how international organisations incorporate external inequalities into their institutional structures.

²⁷ Equal distributions of rights have always both inclusive and exclusive effects (for example, equal rights for all citizens exclude foreigners, equal rights for all humans exclude animals). See Rae, Douglas, Equalities (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘The social space and the genesis of groups’, Theory and Society, 14:6 (1985), pp. 723–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ The close links between great power status and privileged positions in the League of Nations and United Nations point in this direction.

³⁰ See Clark, Ian, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 4Google Scholar; Bourdieu, La distinction and Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, pp. 531–40.

³¹ See, in particular, Clark, Legitimacy in International Society, pp. 1–30.

³² Stratification is but one form of social differentiation. See Albert, Mathias and Buzan, Barry, ‘Differentiation: a sociological approach to International Relations theory’, European Journal of International Relations, 16:3 (2010), pp. 315–37Google Scholar.

³³ For histories of the League of Nations, see Walters, F. P., A History of the League of Nations, repr. (London and New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, and Henig, Ruth, The League of Nations: Makers of the Modern World: The Peace Conferences of 1919–23 and Their Aftermath (London: Haus Publishing Ltd, 2010)Google Scholar.

³⁴ The three case studies were selected because they address key characteristics of the institutional design of the League (namely decision-making procedures, membership rules, and budget contributions) and, moreover, feature a variance of stratificatory understandings. These three characteristics, though, mostly relate to the political activities of the League. For its activities in the international economic and financial realm, which grew in importance over time, see Clavin, Patricia, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ For the establishment of the League, and especially the debates on the form of the Council, see Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States, pp. 154–9; Henig, The League of Nations, pp. 25–53 and MacMillan, Margaret, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray Publishers, 2001)Google Scholar.

³⁶ David Hunter Miller, the legal adviser of the US delegation, edited the records of the establishment of the League of Nations in two volumes, the first of which comprises his notes: Miller, David H., The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume One (New York, London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1928)Google Scholar. The second volume contains the various drafts and minutes of the meetings in Paris 1919: (ed.), David H. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume Two (New York, London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1928)Google Scholar. Wilson's fourth draft can be found in the second volume: ibid., pp. 145–54 (p. 146).

³⁷ Ibid., p. 68.

³⁸ Ibid., pp. 23–60. Smuts was then also appointed as one of the two representatives of the British Empire in the League Commission at the peace conference (with Lord Cecil as the second representative).

³⁹ Ibid., p. 41.

⁴⁰ Quoted in Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume One, p. 162. Hymans, who represented a state that had strongly suffered from German aggression, assumed the role of a key defender of the rights of smaller states during the conference. See Marks, Sally, Paul Hymans, Belgium. Makers of the Modern World: the Peace Conferences of 1919–23 and their Aftermath (London: Haus Publishing, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ See the arguments, especially of the Brazilian delegate Pessoa, in the third and ninth commission meeting (see the minutes in Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume Two, pp. 260, 302, 337–8). In the meeting with the neutral states, Chile likewise proposed a non-great powers-based electorate (see ibid., p. 624).

⁴² Ibid., pp. 302, 625, 634.

⁴³ While ‘great powers’ semantics were omnipresent in the committee's discussions and draft Covenants, the final draft did not use the notion but referred to ‘Principal Allied and Associated Powers’ (Article 4).

⁴⁴ See Myers, Denys P., ‘Representation in League of Nations Council’, American Journal of International Law, 20:4 (1926), pp. 689–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵⁵ For the negotiations on the mandates systems and the ‘potent brew of liberal internationalism, imperial humanitarianism, and sheer territorial acquisitiveness’ that animated its genesis, see Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 17–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The quote is from p. 27. Note that Smuts's initial plan for the mandates system related not to colonies but to the eastern European countries that were formerly part of the Austrian-Hungarian, Ottoman, or Russian empires (for which then instead a system of minority treaties was developed). See Anghie, Imperialism, p. 119.

⁵⁶ Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (LoN OJ, February 1920), p. 9.

⁵⁷ See Pedersen, The Guardians, pp. 261–86. As Pedersen notes, Iraq effectively remained a British client state despite its newly recognised formal independence.

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⁶¹ See also Walters, A History of the League of Nations, pp. 134–5.

⁶² For an overview of international organisations in the interwar period, see Basdevant, Suzanne, ‘Unions internationales’, in Lapradelle, A. d. and Niboyet, J.-P. (eds), Répertoire de droit international. Tome X: Nationalité des sociétés – Zones franches (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1931), pp. 704–17Google Scholar and Herren, Madeleine, Internationale Organisationen seit 1865: Eine Globalgeschichte der internationalen Ordnung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), pp. 50–84Google Scholar.

⁶³ Notably, its founding members included India, then still a colony, as well as two Soviet republics that were formally part of the Soviet Union (Byelorussia, Ukraine). See Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States, pp. 188–9, fn. p. 116.

⁶⁴ See Symons, Jonathan, ‘The legitimation of international organisations: Examining the identity of the communities that grant legitimacy’, Review of International Studies, 37:5 (2011), pp. 2557–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁶⁷ See ibid., pp. 272–81.

⁶⁸ For the negotiations and the resulting compromise, see Tworek, Heidi J. S., ‘A union of nations or administrations? Voting rights, representation, and sovereignty at the international telecommunications union in the 1930s’, in Balbi, Gabrielle and Fickers, Andreas (eds), ITU as Actor, Arena, and Antenna of Techno-Diplomacy (De Gruyter, forthcoming, 2019)Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ See Riches, Majority Rule in International Organization, pp. 281–7.

⁷⁰ See ibid., pp. 256–7.

⁷¹ See Basdevant, ‘Unions internationales’, p. 715.

⁷² For the International Institute of Agriculture, see Riches, Majority Rule in International Organization, pp. 260–7. For the similar example of the International Sanitary Convention, see Hill, ‘The allocation of expenses in international organization’, p. 132.

⁷³ See Riches, Majority Rule in International Organization, p. 234 and Basdevant, ‘Unions internationales’, p. 715.

⁷⁴ See Ames, The League of Nations, p. 23.

⁷⁵ See also Tooze, Adam, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931 (London: Penguin Books, 2014), pp. 261–2Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ See Koo, Wellington, Voting Procedures in International Political Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947), p. 79Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ See for instance Clark, Hegemony in International Society, Bukovansky et al., Special Responsibilities; Fehl, ‘Unequal power’; and Pouliot, ‘Setting status in stone’. Bially Mattern and Zarakol, ‘Hierarchies in world politics’ likewise seem to equate institutionalised inequalities primarily with authority relations.

⁷⁸ Fehl and Freistein, ‘Institutional Mechanisms’, p. 30.

⁷⁹ Bukovansky et al., Special Responsibilities focus on ‘special responsibilities’, but essentially conceptualise them as legitimate power, and thus neglect the differences in the legitimacy of rights- and duty-oriented stratificatory interlinkages. While Fehl and Freistein (‘Institutional Mechanisms’) move beyond the authority-relations focus of the hierarchy literature by treating institutionalised inequalities as distributions of goods, they too miss these differences in legitimacy.

⁸⁰ See Pouliot, ‘Setting status in stone’.