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Institutional selection in international relations: state anarchy as order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Hendrik Spruyt
Hendrik Spruyt
Affiliation:
Member of the Institute of War and Peace Studies and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, New York.
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Abstract

By the end of the medieval era, three new competing institutions attempted to capture gains from trade and reduce feudal particularism: sovereign territorial states, cityleagues, and city-states. By the middle of the seventeenth century, city-leagues and city-states had declined markedly. Territorial states survived as the dominant form because they were able to reduce free riding, lower transaction costs, and credibly commit their constituents. The selection process took place along three dimensions. First, sovereign territorial states proved competitively superior in the economic realm. Second, states increasingly recognized only other sovereign territorial states as legitimate actors in the international system. Third, other actors defected to or copied the institutional makeup of sovereign territorial organization. The emergence of discrete territorial units in which only sovereign authorities represented their citizens as the predominant type of organization in international affairs created a new solution to the problem of markets and hierarchies.

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Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 527 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1994

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References

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103. On the notion of institutional mimicry, see DiMaggio, Paul and Powell, Walter, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48 (04 1983), pp. 147–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks to Guy Peters and Stephen Krasner for bringing this argument to my attention.

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108. On the number of Genovese troops, see Scammel, , The World Encompassed, p. 161Google Scholar. Florence fielded about twenty-four thousand men in 1550; see Cochrane, , Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, p. 91Google Scholar. On the Rhenish-Swabian league, see Rotz, Rhiman, “German Towns,” in Strayer, Joseph, ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 5 (New York: Charles Scribner, 1985), p. 464Google Scholar. By contrast, the French standing army after the end of the Hundred Years War in the middle of the fifteenth century numbered about fourteen thousand.

109. Braudel, , The Perspective of the World, p. 91Google Scholar.

110. This notion of international empowerment also explains why African states have persisted despite tribal and irredentist movements. For that argument, see Jackson, Robert, “Quasi-States, Dual Regimes, and Neo-classical Theory: International Jurisprudence and the Third World,” International Organization 41 (Autumn 1987), pp. 519–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111. North argues that the flaw of suggesting optimality in outcomes existed particularly in his earlier work. See North, Douglass, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of this problem, also see Moe, “New Economics of Organization.”

112. For the latter use of transaction costs, see Dudley, “Structural Change in Interdependent Bureaucracies”; and Levi, Of Rule and Revenue.

113. For a comparison between the competitive state system and non-European autarkic empires, see Hall, , Powers and Liberties; and Hall, John, ed., States in History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar.

114. See Parker, David, The Making of French Absolutism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983)Google Scholar, for the argument that French absolutism was paradoxically quite weak vis-à-vis the multitude of social actors. Robin Briggs notes how monarchs were constrained in the level of debasement, as this would weaken their “international position.” See Briggs, Robin, Early Modern France 1560–1715 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 44Google Scholar.

115. As John Hall points out, that argument already had been made by Hall, Gibbon, Powers and Liberties, p. 14Google Scholar.

116. For a discussion of the Dutch case, see Boxer, C. R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800 (London: Penguin, 1965), pp. 119 and 328Google Scholar; and Holton, R. J., Cities, Capitalism, and Civilization (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), p. 108Google Scholar.

117. For the difference, see Held, David, Political Theory and the Modern State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, chap. 8.

118. For different views about the compatibility of Islam and statehood, see Piscatori, James, Islam in a World of Nation-States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

119. The early independence literature in emphasizing transnational relations below the state level can be read as describing the tension between sovereign territorial rule and the nonspatial character of the global economy. See Keohane, Robert and Nye, Joseph, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1977)Google Scholar. See also Reich, Robert, The Work of Nations (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991)Google Scholar. Porter argues that the state is still relevant, but only in terms of an aggregation of sectors. See Porter, Michael, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York: Free Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the development toward truly transnational organization, see Bartlett, Christopher and Ghoshal, Sumantra, Managing Across Borders (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

120. This issue is raised explicitly in Ruggie, John, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47 (Winter 1993), pp. 139–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121. This issue has been well-described by Kratochwil, “Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality”; Holzgrefe, J. L., “The Origins of Modern International Relations Theory,” Review of International Studies 15 (01 1989), pp. 11–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ruggie, John, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity,” in Keohane, Robert, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 131–157Google Scholar.

122. For example, Wright cites Arnold Brecht's view that the anarchy of the state system is the primary cause of armed conflict: “There is a cause of wars between sovereign states that stands above all others—the fact that there are sovereign states, and a very great many of them.” See Wright, Quincy, A Study of War, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), p. 896Google Scholar.

123. Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124. Realists such as Robert Gilpin have suggested that the most fundamental type of system change is change in the type of units, but there has been little research on what the effects of such change are. See Gilpin, , War and Change in World Politics, pp. 41–42Google Scholar; and Katzenstein, Peter, “International Relations Theory and the Analysis of Change,” in Czempiel, and Rosenau, , Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, pp. 291–304Google Scholar.

125. This corresponds with what Ruggie describes as the mode of individuation between units. See Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond.”

126. Wendt, Alexander E., “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 335–70 and p. 342 in particularCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ashley makes a similar point from a poststructural perspective. See Ashley, Richard, “The Poverty of Neorealism,” in Keohane, , Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 255–300Google Scholar.

127. See Thomson, Janice, “Sovereignty in Historical Perspective: The Evolution of State Control over Extraterritorial Violence,” in Caporaso, James, ed., The Elusive State (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1989), pp. 227–54Google Scholar. See also Ritchie's account of Kidd, Captain in Ritchie, Robert, Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

128. Thomson, Janice, “State Practices, International Norms, and the Decline of Mercenarism,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (03 1990), pp. 23–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.