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(Un)making global inequalities: International institutions in a stratified international society

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Abstract

International Relations theorists have recently paid increasing attention to the hierarchical nature of international society, that is, to its built-in structural inequalities. In this article, we focus on one thus far neglected aspect of global social stratification by highlighting the role that international institutions play in both reproducing and transforming inequalities among states and other global subjects. We argue that this focus on institutions can advance our understanding of the processes through which global inequalities are maintained and changed, and that institutionalist research can in turn benefit from shifting its attention from the predominant cooperation paradigm to capturing the manifold ‘inequality’ effects of institutionalised interactions in world politics. We illustrate this shift of perspective with a dual case study of the Ottawa and Oslo Conventions banning anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions.

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Notes

  1. We understand international institutions as formally agreed sets of rules regulating cooperation and conflict among state and non-state global actors, some of which also provide for the creation of international organisations (IOs) and/or are applied by IO bureaucracies.

  2. We use the term ‘international society’, which denotes the social dimension of global order (e.g. Albert and Buzan 2017) and includes a variety of subjects such as states as well as non-state groups or even individuals.

  3. Following sociologists in their understanding of inequalities as structural, we use the term consciously (instead of ‘asymmetry’ or others). International society is marked by multiple social inequalities among global subjects – structural (economic, political, and other) disadvantages that (groups of) states and other members of international society face on the basis of socially determined criteria beyond their influence – and stratified in the sense of ranking its members into unequal social positions. Inequalities in this understanding connote the analytical observation of unequal outcomes with the normative assumption that modern social relations have been (and should be) generally expected to head towards greater overall equality (Grusky 2001; Münch 2013).

  4. Similarly, critical approaches to International Political Economy (IPE) recognise that international institutions maintain hegemonic orders (Cox 1983; Gill and Cutler 2014; Golub 2013), yet remain focused on the economic dimension of inequality. This has also led to the conclusion that change is unlikely to originate within international institutions but must begin with class action at the (trans-)national level (e.g. Cox 1983:173).

  5. Realist analyses have addressed cases in which weaker Southern states sought to use institutions to improve their capabilities relative to the North, but have argued that such attempts are ultimately doomed to fail (Krasner 1985). As highlighted particularly by power transition theory (Lemke 2002), realists would expect institutions to simply adapt to shifts in the global distribution of material power.

  6. The sociological analyses of international organisations cited here offer useful insights into intra-institutional power dynamics, but mostly remain focused on a specific institutional context, failing to address systematically the link to unequal global macro structures.

  7. While the notion of hierarchy is ‘embedded’ in one of the English School’s primary institutions, ‘great power management’ (Buzan and Schouenbourg 2018: 123), this captures only a small part of the stratification patterns we are interested in. Neither is our perspective comprised in Navari’s discussion of a ‘balance of power’, which she conceptualises as a (rather unidimensional) intervening variable between primary and secondary institutions (Navari 2019: 71).

  8. Pouliot’s seminal study of UN and NATO mentions the importance of recognising the ‘nesting’ of local ‘pecking orders’ in global hierarchies (Pouliot 2016: 253), yet focuses in substance on describing the former.

  9. With regard to processes of status ascription or stigmatisation, the creation of social categories and the allocation of immaterial rewards based on these categories can coincide empirically, as when states are labelled ‘rogue states’. However, in many cases the connection between categories and immaterial rewards is more volatile, as ‘notions of status evolve over time and space’ (Pouliot 2014: 192) and different institutional contexts may attach different social rewards to the same categories. Consider, for instance, the explicit stigmatisation of nuclear weapons possession in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which attempts to reverse the traditional role of nuclear weapons as a ‘status marker’ in international relations (Fehl 2015; Fikenscher et al. 2015).

  10. Emulation is not always immediately visible, but can be seen as an inter-organisational translation process of the existing categories and practices, which then will be adapted to an institutional fit.

  11. Interviewed by the authors, Frankfurt, 11 July 2006.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the three anonymous reviewers and the JIRD editors for their guidance in revising and improving this paper. For thoughtful comments on previous versions, we also thank Elizabeth Bloodgood, Katia Coleman, Frank Gadinger, Tine Hanrieder, Catherine Hecht, Ian Hurd, Edward Keene, Bettina Mahlert, Thomas Müller, Dirk Peters, Miriam Prys, Matthew Stephens, Lora Viola, and the participants of the 2016 EWIS Workshop and 2017 ISA Workshop on ‘Institutionalized Inequalities’. We thank the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the International Studies Association for funding workshops and meetings that enabled us to receive valuable feedback on our ideas.

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  1. Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung/Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Baseler Str. 27-31, 60329, Frankfurt, Germany

    Caroline Fehl

  2. Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University-Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Katja Freistein

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Fehl, C., Freistein, K. (Un)making global inequalities: International institutions in a stratified international society. J Int Relat Dev 24, 251–278 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-020-00190-z

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