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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.
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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

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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.

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