Research

Book project

Images of Hierarchy

Across the world, struggles over core aspects of international order are intensifying. Rising powers like China and India, as well as far-right actors, are increasingly vocal in their attempts to alter international order’s social hierarchies, albeit in vastly different ways. Such acts of resistance are by no means unprecedented; a range of actors have long sought to reform fundamental hierarchies of international order. How do actors resist and contest international hierarchies? And what effects have such acts of resistance had on international order historically?

Images of Hierarchy argues that actors in international relations contest not only their own position within hierarchies but also how those hierarchies are structured in the first place. Put differently, they are not just fighting over their rank within an existing hierarchy but over how that hierarchy is organized: which positions exist, how they are defined, and how they relate to one another. Is the international hierarchy composed of three different rungs, as per the distinction between great, middle, and small powers? Or is it better characterized as a binary struggle between the “haves” and “have-nots,” as some suggest? Alternatively, is the idea of international hierarchy an oxymoron given the prevalence of sovereign equality in today’s international system? Images of Hierarchy examines the various conceptions of how the international system is stratified, and how their invocation has shaped international order. It traces their deployment from the 1907 Hague Conference and the founding of the United Nations in 1945 to the campaign for a New International Economic Order in the 1970s. The book shows how these different conceptions of hierarchy continue to inform contemporary struggles to reorder the international system today.

Images of Hierarchy reveals that some of the most fundamental features of contemporary international order are not simply the product of top-down design, but of resistance and reconfiguration “from below.” It challenges the view that current efforts to reshape global order are historically novel. Contemporary actors—from China to transnational far-right movements—draw on and repurpose long-standing images of hierarchy that have circulated throughout modern international society. Their objectives may indeed be historically specific, but the conceptions of hierarchy they mobilize to pursue these goals are anything but new.