Content uploaded by Daniel Lambach
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Daniel Lambach on Jun 01, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
International Hierarchies, Norms and Agents*
Daniel Lambach (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), Dorte Hühnert (Universität Duisburg-
Essen)
Contact: lambach@normativeorders.net, dorte.huehnert@uni-due.de
Abstract
The ‘new hierarchy studies’ are centered around a static and structuralist approach to
hierarchy. In contrast, we need to pay more attention to how actors sustain, reproduce and
challenge hierarchies. This article offers a theoretical framework that approaches hierarchies
dynamically through the prism of agency and structure. It focuses on the role of norms as a
(de-)stabilizing instrument of international hierarchies, which are subject to contestation by
agents situated within these hierarchies. Both high-status and low-status agents change and
stabilize hierarchical structures by exercising power over norms to expand their own agency
or limit the agency of others. This nexus of agents, norms and hierarchy is illustrated through
a case study of the g7+, a group of self-declared ‘fragile states’ who attained a collective
agency in global development cooperation to help rewrite the rules for donor countries.
Word count: 11,208
* Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Fünfte Offene Sektionstagung der Sektion
Internationale Beziehungen der DVPW, Bremen, 4-6 October 2017, at the conference ‘Norms and the Role of
Agency’ of the DVPW Working Group on Norm Research, Potsdam, 4-5 May 2018, and at a Research
Colloquium of the Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg-Essen, 11 March 2019. We
are grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers, Markus Bayer, Tobias Debiel, Jochen Hippler, Matthias
Hofferberth, Caroline Kärger, Roy Karadag, Kai Koddenbrock, Simon Koschut, Janet Kursawe, Elvira Rosert,
Andrea Schneiker, Elena Sondermann, Arne Sönnichsen, Cornelia Ulbert, and Carmen Wunderlich for their
helpful comments and suggestions.
2
Introduction
Hierarchies are systems of social relations among two or more actors that are characterized
by permanent sub- and superordination, and are the product of unequal social structures. In
spite of their manifest injustice, hierarchies are very stable social arrangements. But why?
Present contributions to the literature are more concerned with what hierarchy does rather
than how hierarchy is maintained. We might expect powerful actors to sustain hierarchy so
they can continue to enjoy the benefits of their exalted status, but how do they do it?
Furthermore, how do the powerless challenge, uphold or evade structures of domination?
Maybe the relative neglect of these questions is because the answers seem obvious. When
we think of hierarchy maintenance, we think of military and economic interventions,
diplomatic pressure, unequal trade relationships, differential voting power in international
institutions and the like. These direct forms of power are widely studied. However, there are
also more subtle and less well understood means. This article focuses on the production of
normative orders as instruments of everyday hierarchy maintenance.
In very general terms, Barnett and Duvall observe that power can be exercised not just in
direct relationships but also through ‘the constitution of subjects’ capacities’ and the
‘production of subjectivity in systems of meaning and signification’ (Barnett and Duvall, 2005:
43). These arguments show why there is little fundamental resistance against global
hierarchies. It is not, we suggest, because there are no grievances among the less privileged
but because these grievances are, for the most part, kept under control – not by force but by
persuasion and socialization, leading lower-status actors to accept their position in a deeply
unequal global society. Hierarchy cannot be maintained through direct forms of power alone
3
because these are costly and become blunted by overuse. All authority needs to be legitimized
and even the most powerful crave recognition (Epstein et al., 2018).
To prevent lower-status actors from questioning their existence and legitimacy, hierarchies
have to be justified with reference to a normative order external to themselves, such as a
‘civilization vs. barbarians’ discourse or similar narratives (Ward, 2017). The international
political economy is a good example of this dynamic. There, the normative order of global
capitalism justifies massive inequalities through narratives of differential resource
endowment, economic convergence and the innovative effects of social inequality, and
through differentiating and insulating the economic sphere and its actors (corporations,
consumers) from that of politics (the state) and society (citizens, civil society). Such normative
orders are complex and very effective at making a hierarchical state of affairs appear normal
and at socializing everyone into the hierarchy.
This has two implications. The first is that normative orders, and thereby hierarchies, are
vulnerable to contestation. Lower-status actors, by which we refer to both states and non-
state actors, can challenge norms much more effectively than they could resist direct military
or economic pressure. The second is that, in contrast to the first point, hierarchies can only be
maintained if both higher- and lower-status actors play along. Lower-status actors are often
quiescent in the face of inequality (MacDonald, 2017; Sharman, 2012). And when they do
engage in hierarchy contestation, their concerns are most often positional. In other words,
their main aim is not to overturn the hierarchy altogether but to improve their position within
it, reaffirming the hierarchy even though they might consider it illegitimate (Nel, 2010).
To be sure, norms and norm contestation are only one instrument of hierarchy maintenance
among many. This article focuses on them because it is an insidious and understudied
4
mechanism. Norms give meaning to, constrain and enable particular kinds of agency (Towns,
2012), and agents have the capability to change norms thereby affecting social order
(Kratochwil and Ruggie, 1986: 766-769; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 909-911). We argue that
high-status actors maintain hierarchies by manipulating norms to shape the agency of less
powerful actors and enhance their own, and that low-status actors use norm contestation to
improve their position and, rarely, to challenge the idea of hierarchy. We take an agent-
structure approach that describes hierarchies as the product of global structures of capital
inequality. Hierarchies produce subjectivities for agents embedded within them. Agents
contest norms justifying or challenging hierarchies and structures. This approach allows us to
appreciate both how powerful actors maintain inequality in the international system and how
powerless actors are compelled to uphold the very system that generates their lower-class
status.
The paper proceeds as follows: In a first step, we survey the ‘new hierarchy studies’ and
discuss its main foci and limitations. We then present our theoretical approach by clarifying
the links between structure, agency, hierarchy and normative orders. After that, we discuss
how low-status agents use norms to affect their own agency and that of others to obtain
changes in the underlying hierarchy. This can take different forms, like delineating ‘acceptable’
from ‘unacceptable’ categories of action, creating ‘acceptable’ types of actors and defining
their characteristics (e.g. modes of organization), or fixing socially contested meanings about
agency. We then illustrate our argument with a case study of the g7+, a group of self-declared
‘fragile states’ in international development cooperation. The g7+ contested norms about
global governance, behavior in aid relationships, and technical standards about the
measurement of ‘fragile states’. They thereby managed to expand their agency and change
5
norms that specify donor duties and roles, but, by ‘working within the systen’, the g7+
ultimately stabilized the hierarchies and inequities of global development cooperation.
The New Hierarchy Studies
The roots of international theory’s engagement with hierarchy go back to 18th century
European thinking (Hobson, 2014) and the imperialist foundations of political science and IR
scholarship themselves (Vitalis, 2010). Since then, there has been a continuous, if somewhat
marginalized engagement with hierarchy in IR from e.g. the Third World School of
International Relations (Neuman, 1998), postcolonial scholars (Grovogui, 2006), ‘subaltern
realists’ (Ayoob, 1998), theorists of Empire (Baumann and Dingwerth, 2014; Barder, 2015) and
historically oriented works (Hobson and Sharman, 2005), often with a focus on specific
regional systems (e.g. Goh, 2008; Brown, 2006). There have also been various attempts to re-
theorize international relations through a hierarchy lens (such as Cooley, 2005; Hobson, 2014;
Hobson and Sharman, 2005; Donnelly, 2009; Dunne, 2003; see also Fn. 1-5 in Schulz, 2018).
The 2010s in particular have seen a growing interest in this topic, with new publications
appearing with growing rapidity and impact. Recent works by Janice Bially Mattern and Ayşe
Zarakol have been very influential (Bially Mattern and Zarakol, 2016; Zarakol, 2017a),
galvanizing the emergence of what Nexon calls the ‘new hierarchy studies’ (Nexon, 2017: 1).
1
They find the various strands of scholarship to be united by two main propositions: ‘first, that
1
As a side-effect, this has also reinvigorated scholarly interest in the concept of anarchy (see Havercroft and
Prichard, 2017), even though the relationship between hierarchy and anarchy is more complicated than it
seems at first glance (see McConaughey et al., 2018; Holm and Sending, 2018).
6
hierarchies are a ubiquitous feature of international (that is, inter-state) politics; and second,
that they generate social, moral, and behavioral dynamics that are different from those
created by other arrangements. In short, hierarchies matter (and have always mattered) in
distinctive ways for world politics’ (Bially Mattern and Zarakol, 2016: 624). Bially Mattern and
Zarakol distinguish narrow and broad conceptions of hierarchy, where the former focuses on
relations of legitimate authority analogous to relations within states, while the latter also
includes structures of inequality that affect global politics but that are not necessarily based
on some legal differentiation.
Recent scholarship has focused mostly on the effects of hierarchy, i.e. what operating in a
hierarchy means for actors (Bially Mattern and Zarakol, 2016; Towns and Rumelili, 2017), and
on distinguishing types of hierarchy (McConaughey et al., 2018). But there are two related
issues that are not well addressed by existing research. The first issue is how hierarchies
produce subjectivities. Hierarchies are seen as ‘prior to and fundamentally constitutive of
sovereign statehood’ (Bially Mattern and Zarakol, 2016: 631) but beyond that, the productive
effects of hierarchy are only badly understood. Present scholarship asssumes that hierarchies
are constitutive of agents but does not explain how this process works. The second issue is
how hierarchies are sustained and changed (MacDonald, 2017: 14). Hierarchies are often
portrayed as static and unchanging, with little attention paid to the actors, processes and
histories upon which they are built. Pouliot (2016), using a practice-oriented approach, is a
rare exception, as are Towns and Rumelili (2017) who explore how norms create social
hierarchies. Beyond those examples, most accounts of hierarchies leave little scope for
agency. As both MacDonald (2017) and Zarakol (2017b: 11) point out, most treatments of
hierarchy (e.g. Butcher and Griffiths, 2017) rest on structuralist ontologies where hierarchies
7
are causally prior to actors and determine states’ behavior through the logic of positionality.
2
But this overlooks how actors can affect hierarchies. It downplays the agency of actors to make
choices vis-à-vis the hierarchy, even if such choices are made ‘in tight corners’ (Lonsdale,
2000). In her critique of Butcher and Griffiths, Stewart explicitly calls for an ‘alternative
conception that eschews a structural focus on hierarchy and anarchy for an actor-centric focus
on governance’ (Stewart, 2017: 18) but offers no details as to how such a conception might
look like.
As a result, hierarchies are often described as more rigid and unchanging than they are in
practice. Of course, hierarchies are stable by definition but a more dynamic conception of
stability would allow us to better understand periods of evolution and revolution – in fact, we
posit that hierarchies are stable because of their adaptability. Through an appreciation of both
the constructive effects of hierarchy as well as their own constitutedness in social action, we
can move towards such a more dynamic approach. This is what this paper attempts, by
considering hierarchies as the product of structures that are themselves subject to change by
agents. By focusing on the role of norms in the attribution of agency, we offer a more fine-
grained explanation how hierarchies are constituted, stabilized and changed. Clearly, to fully
appreciate the agent-structure dynamic of hierarchy, we need to understand the scope for
agency even within highly stratified systems. This approach needs to account for the behavior
not just of powerful agents but also of less powerful ones (Sharman, 2012; MacDonald, 2017).
While the perspective of powerful actors is adequately covered by the literatures on, e.g.,
Empire and hegemony, powerless actors get much less attention. However, they are arguably
2
Only contractualist theories of hierarchy (Lake, 2009; Cooley, 2005) have an actor-centered ontology but tend
to downplay the structuring effect of hierarchies.
8
the more interesting case for our theory because they live in a world not of their making while
still having some degree of agency. As our case study shows, they can, within limits, even
affect the rules of hierarchy through norm contestation.
A Dynamic Theoretical Framework of Hierarchy
In brief, we view hierarchies through an agent-structure lens to overcome the static
structuralist view of hierarchy. Hierarchies are a system of gradated identities and social roles
for agents. Agents relate to hierarchies in many different ways, from maintenance to
dissidence. While agents can manipulate other agents’ agency and their own through a variety
of instruments, we focus on the role of norms in the (re)production of unequal agency because
they are an often-used and understudied means of hierarchy management. These
relationships are summarized in Figure 1 and explained in more detail below.
Figure 1: Hierarchies, Norms and the Agent-Structure Relationship
9
Notes:
* denotes unequal relationships of hierarchy maintenance, often via directive power; also
relations of mutual (mis-)recognition and constitution
† denotes the capability of agents to affect structures except through norm contestation
(which is covered through other paths); different ways of dotting/dashing and shading the
line indicate differential capacities to affect structures among higher-status and lower-
status agents
Structures
Agent-structure theories see agents and structures as linked in a mutually constitutive
relationship (‘co-constitution’). In earlier works, structure is variously expressed as stable
patterns of aggregate behavior, law-like regularities, collective rules, systems of human
relationships or constitutive relationships of difference (Wight, 2006: 121-176). These are
broad understandings of structure that locate it in the relationships and behavior of agents.
But if we wish to move away from a structuralist account of hierarchy, we need to disentangle
agents, relations and structures in our theoretical approach. Hence, we conceptualize
relations as products of structures, not as part thereof.
We treat structures as distributions of resources among actors in global politics. Resources
can be understood similar to Bourdieu’s forms of capital, i.e. encompassing material and non-
material resources (for a similar approach, see Musgrave and Nexon, 2018). Where Realists
like focus on material resources, other research demonstrates that symbolic and cultural
forms of capital and their distribution also matter for actors’ behavior (Jepperson et al., 1996;
Ward, 2017). Hobson and Sharman point out that trying to distinguish between the two is
futile anyway: states do not become great powers by virtue of great material power
capabilities alone but also by ‘conform[ing] to the social discourse that defines great power
status at any particular time’ (Hobson and Sharman, 2005: 87; similarly Zarakol, 2010: 4). We
10
choose the notions of resources and capital because they can be easily translated into similar
concepts from other literatures.
3
Historical sociology shows that unequal distributions of resources lead to social
differentiation. Bringing this insight to bear on IR, Buzan and Albert (2010) distinguish
between segmentary, stratificatory and functional types of differentiation in the global (see
also Donnelly, 2012). To this we add the spatial differentiation of the territorial system of
states (Löw, 2008; Elden, 2009). The upshot of such differentiation is that forms of capital
matter more or less in different fields, e.g. military capabilities are more useful in security
arenas than in the field of global finance. As Pouliot rightly summarizes, ‘the social value of
given resources is neither immanent nor self-evident, but historically contingent and socially
defined’ (Pouliot, 2014: 195, emphasis in the original).
Hierarchies
Hierarchies are the product of unequal social structures. We define hierarchies as stable
systems of social relations among two or more actors that are characterized by permanent
sub- and superordination, situating us within the broader approach to hierarchy identified by
Bially Mattern and Zarakol (2016: 629-631). Exchanges within these relationships are unequal,
ranging from cases where inequality is barely visible to those of overt command and control.
The subset of formal hierarchies is further characterized by relations of authority.
4
But as
3
For instance, Wolf (2019) disaggregates the concept of status into subcomponents like trait-status, honor and
glory, all of which echo aspects of symbolic and cultural capital. This also ties into the vast literature around
emotions in IR (such as Koschut, 2020).
4
But see Schulz (2018) on how authority cannot be disentangled from class and status.
11
unequal as hierarchical relationships are, they still provide a crucial way for actors to (mis-)
recognize each other, adding a constitutive element to their relationship.
The existence of hierarchies and their exact composition are determined by structural
inequalities and the resulting distributions of capital. Just as structures differ between fields,
hierarchies are field-specific and therefore not universal, which is why we prefer to speak of
them in the plural. Hierarchies affect agents’ behavior by assigning status within a community.
As Renshon (2017: 4) points out, ‘status’ works in two ways here, referring both to position
within the communal hierarchy as well as a recognition of identity and group membership.
Hierarchies provide agents with a framework of social roles and identities (e.g. as a ‘great
power’) that conditions agents’ behavior. The social embeddedness of hierarchies implies that
hierarchies will affect agents even if these agents do not recognize their status within the
hierarchy. In other words, hierarchies may be the product of social structure but they work
because everyone acts accordingly.
This alerts us to the social constructedness of hierarchy – not so much their very existence,
which we see as structurally determined, but their content. Hierarchies are normatively
‘empty’ but cannot exist without reference to a normative order to provide their meaning and
internal rules. The literature on status points out that ascriptions of prestige relate to
collective beliefs about superiority (Larson et al., 2014: 8). Wolf (2019) highlights how prestige
cannot exist in the absence of a normative order against which ‘honorable’ behavior can be
judged. Norms are the instrument through which intersubjective agreement is negotiated by
establishing standards of status measurement. This implies that hierarchies will differ from
each other between fields or over time. Historically, Western justifications of global inequality
first shifted from religious to racial conceptions in the era of imperialism, and then to socialist
12
and democratic logics after the Second World War (Hobson and Sharman, 2005: 65; see also
Keene, 2007).
Due to their structural origins, hierarchies are very stable and rarely overturned completely
(Zarakol, 2018). The stability of global hierarchies is evidenced by the widespread notion in
the power politics literature that the rise of new powers may cause ‘geopolitical earthquakes’
(Ward, 2017: 1). But hierarchies are also dynamic, adapting to shifts in the underlying
structures but also to the outcomes of contestation. Agents may contest their specific
standing within a hierarchy or – more ambitiously and less frequently – the existence and
meaning of a hierarchy altogether. The (momentary) results of these contestations are
inscribed into norms that contain information about the rules of a hierarchical order, e.g.
about its system of ranking, appropriate behavior and possibilities for change. Crucially,
hierarchies do not persist through sheer inertia but need active maintenance from all sides
due to their relational nature. For high-status agents, shaping hierarchies and the normative
orders underpinning them can be a very subtle and cost-effective way of maintaining
hierarchical relationships. However, as MacDonald argues, to understand hierarchies we need
to look not just at ‘who can claim the right to command, but also who will tend to obey’
(MacDonald, 2017: 4) – or who will not obey.
Agents
13
Agents are actors situated in hierarchical relations.
5
Agents are defined by their capacity to
formulate and execute strategies for action (Hay, 2002: 94). Of course, agents are socially
entangled beings and their intentions evolve through engagement with their environment and
other agents in social interactions (Wight, 2006: 212-215). We therefore define agency as the
context-sensitive capability of an agent for intentional action. This capability is affected by
internal characteristics of the agents (individual), through relationships with other agents
(relational) and by social context (structural). This implies that agents do not have a fixed
amount of agency but a varying kind and scope of agency in different settings.
6
Agents have different capabilities to affect structures and contest norms. We follow Schulz’
approach that: ‘(a) particular course of action may typically result from a structure, but this
depends on actors’ perceptions of that structure’ (Schulz, 2018: 92, emphasis added). This
ascribes to agents a considerable degree of agency prima facie. However, agency is limited
and given concrete scope by social hierarchies. Agents cannot ‘do away’ with hierarchies
fundamentally but can change their position in them, at least slightly. For instance, Ward
demonstrates how revisionist powers seek to redistribute positionality but only rarely
challenge international order on a normative level. When they play the status game, agents
5
Although many of the following examples address hierarchies among states, ‘agent’ in this text refers to both
states and the various kinds of non-state actors (international organisations, corporations, non-governmental
organizations, epistemic communities etc.).
6
There is considerable disagreement how to conceptualize the agency of collective or corporate actors such
as the state (Wendt, 2004; Epstein, 2013). Wight (2006) is particularly adamant that in the end only human
beings act, not collectives. However, it it is sometimes analytically necessary to treat collectives as if they do.
To deal with this problem, we adopt a pragmatic position by viewing agents in terms of abstraction: Small-
scale actors (individuals, small groups) are nested into larger-scale actors (larger collectives). Accordingly,
what is meant by ‘agent’ depends on the level of abstraction at which we wish to perform our analysis – in
micro-level contexts the focus is on different actors than in macro-level contexts.
14
acknowledge the value of status symbols and thereby legitimize the hierarchy (Ward, 2017: 5-
6).
But hierarchies are not just external limitations, they are also sources of identity. Social
Identity Theory and theories of ontological security tell us that agents are, at least in part,
status-seeking actors (e.g. Renshon, 2017; Paul et al., 2014). For lower-status agents, much
depends on the recognition by higher-status agents, which is more often granted when lower-
status agents conform to sets of rules, adopt the right scripts and internalize a field’s norms.
Agents have to enact ritualized or routinized practices to be seen as ‘worthy’ of participating.
All of this presupposes that agents possess internal resources such as a professional cadre of
technically proficient, multilingual representatives, financial resources, and access to the
status symbols that a field requires. Hierarchies also determine what are ‘acceptable’
emotions for particular status groups, and emotions and affective dialogue stabilize identities
and hierarchies (Koschut, 2018). For example, ‘(w)hether a country exhibits shame or guilt or
embarrassment tells us a lot about the country’s placement in the international system’
(Subotic and Zarakol, 2013: 916).
Norms
Norms are forms of intersubjective knowledge clarifying roles, expectations, obligations etc.
shared and contested among agents. Norms typically exist as a diffuse sort-of-consensus, a
shared understanding among actors, but they can also coalesce into codified rules and
15
institutions like laws, contracts, and conventions.
7
The normative order of a field is the
complex of norms governing relations within the field. This means that normative orders can
(and often will) contain internal conflicts and contradictions that agents can exploit by
selecting which norms to refer to, or which social roles to enact (Sandholtz, 2008: 106-107).
Norms (1) shape agency, (2) legitimize/stabilize or delegitimize hierarchies, and (3)
express/legitimize or problematize/delegitimize structures. As to the first, norms have
constitutive effects, defining identities and roles within social contexts (Katzenstein, 1996;
Kowert and Legro, 1996). More specifically, norms delineate ‘acceptable’ types of agents, i.e.
by prescribing how certain agents may pursue their interests. This entails a definition of an
agent’s characteristics, e.g. what model of organization and which capacities and resources it
needs to be recognized. Norms also have regulative effects, directly affecting agents’ behavior
by distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate forms of action (Lake, 2017: 22). Assuming
that an agent’s identity is sufficiently clear, norms regulate what this agent should be allowed
or empowered to do under which circumstances.
Second, norms legitimize and provide meaning for hierarchies (Keene, 2007; Kustermans,
2019), e.g. by setting out the rules ‘what has to be said and done in order to be regarded as a
certain kind of actor’ (Towns, 2012: 187). Yet the stabilizing function of norms for the
maintenance of international hierarchies is an understudied subject. Towns forcefully
criticizes assumptions in norm research that effective norms ‘homogenize state behavior and
state organizational forms’. In contrast, she argues that ‘(i)n defining what is normal and
7
In contrast to broad understandings of institutions as shared sets of rules, we limit our definition to formal
institutions, i.e. organizations, regimes and conventions, to clarify the distinction between institutions and
norms.
16
desirable, norms set the terms for what is abnormal and undesirable behavior and provide the
means for ranking those states that do not meet a norm as deficient and inferior’ (Towns,
2012: 180). But agents can also use norms to contest hierarchies, e.g. through conspicuous
adherence, by pointing out inconsistencies in the normative order (Hurd, 2005), or by
contesting a norm’s validity or applicability.
Third, norms can affect structures by influencing distributions of capital. They can also affect
the differentiation of world society and which forms of capital are considered more or less
valuable within a field. For instance, in the emerging field of space debris management, there
are competing normative discourses that frame the issue as a commercial (‘space safety’),
environmental (‘space sustainability’) or security concern (‘space surveillance’), touching on
different field logics and proposing different weightings of economic, scientific and military
capital. Hence, norms may exist at the relational level, but they have the capacity of
legitimizing or contesting structures.
Given that norms are both affected by and constitutive of hierarchies, normative change has
effects on hierarchies. As Kowert and Legro point out, agents are ‘well aware of the potential
advantages accruing to those who control certain norms’ (Kowert and Legro, 1996: 492). High-
status agents have many means at their disposal, both hard and soft, to swing normative
debates in their favor (Hurd, 2007). We may assume that high-status agents will work towards
a normative structure that stabilizes their hegemony, e.g. by introducing or supporting norms
that preserve existing hierarchies. For example, norms about nuclear nonproliferation (Krause
and Latham, 1998), codified in a range of treaties, have created a system of atomic ‘haves’
and ‘have-nots’, which has (mostly) protected the status of the ‘nuclear cartel’ of the
Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council against the entry of new atomic powers).
17
High-status agents may also take a more status quo-oriented, ‘antipreneurial’ approach to
preclude the emergence of new, unfavorable norms (Bloomfield, 2015).
How low-status agents use norms
Low-status agents also have ways of contesting global hierarchies and their underlying
normative orders by offering moral discourses to attack justifications for inequality and
hierarchy.
8
Given that all power in international politics needs legitimacy, such contestation
attacks inequality at its roots (Hurd, 2005). Low-status agents can employ all the tools of norm
entrepreneurs: committing to norms, situating norms in institutional contexts, shaping
agendas and building coalitions (Björkdahl, 2013: 325). Of course, some of these practices,
such as agenda-setting, are more difficult for low-status agents who might lack the necessary
resources, but that does not stop them from trying and – sometimes – succeeding.
Corbett, Xu and Weller provide an interesting example how small, poor countries managed to
establish a norm of ‘differentiated development’ in global discourse through a ‘competent
performance of vulnerability’ (Corbett et al., 2019: 651). This has opened the door for a
mobilization of collective agency under labels like the Small Island Developing State (SIDS),
allowing low-status states to contest normative orders of global economic inequality by
making moral claims within the hegemonic liberal framework. Corbett, Xu and Weller argue
that poor states ‘seek to dispense with or reinvent a hierarchical order “from below”’ (Corbett
8
We should not forget that low-status agents may also be status quo-oriented to defend advantageous norms
against revisions that would worsen global inequalities. For example, many developing countries maintain a
more traditional, noninterventionist reading of the norm of state sovereignty against interventionist
reinterpretations advanced by Western states (Thakur, 2004).
18
et al., 2019: 655) through an anti-conformist strategy that frames their vulnerability as a failing
of the global economic order.
However, we believe that this example somewhat overstates possibilities for change. Low-
status agents openly challenge global hierarchies only very rarely. North Korea defying
international demands to stop its nuclear weapons program is one of these instances.
Independence leaders in Asian and African colonies who referred to the incompatibility of
imperialism and racism with the universality of human rights in their challenges to colonial
domination is another. After independence, these same actors – now as governmental
representatives – continued to make normative moves towards a more egalitarian world
system, which did have some impact on the structure of international organizations and the
global economy, even though they failed to achieve their larger goal of a New International
Economic Order. But these are exceptions made possible by the willingness to bear
extraordinary costs for dissidence (North Korea) and a successful campaign of norm
entrepreneurship exploiting the widening contradictions among global normative orders
(independence movements).
Such acts of radical contestation challenge hierarchies and the norms underpinning them but
are very difficult to pull off because low-status agents often lack the resources necessary to
put forward an alternative normative order. Furthermore, the lack of an organizing dissident
ideology means that low-status agents have a harder time mobilizing collective agency. For
instance, developing countries have drifted away from notions of a ‘Third Way’ between
liberalism and socialism, replacing the ‘Bandung spirit’ of the early post-colonial period with a
greater reliance on regional groupings. Finally, agents are socialized into a system of global
hierarchies. From a rational perspective, it is less costly and risky to strive for positional change
19
within the system rather than questioning the system altogether. Socialization also has an
emotive aspect by imbuing hierarchies with a kind of legitimacy.
Hence, it is much more common to see low-status agents using marginal contestation which
seeks change within the system, usually as positional gains for specific agents or changes to
minor rules. Somewhat paradoxically, lower-status agents thereby end up stabilizing and
normalizing the hierarchy. Even when they manage to change the composition of hierarchies
and maybe even lessen the degree of inequality therein, they still reaffirm their very existence.
Bearing this in mind, low-status agents do have a broad repertoire of strategies for
contestation. Drawing on the ‘small states’ literature and recent advances in norm research,
we make the following propositions about the conditions under which low-status agents have
better odds of contesting norms and hierarchies.
9
In these cases, larger changes to the
normative order and, indirectly, the hierarchy are possible.
First, norm contestation is more effective when the normative order is weak and/or difficult
to apply to a particular social context, allowing low-status agents to position themselves as
mediators and translators between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. Recent work on ‘norm
appropriation’, ‘norm translation’ and ‘norm circulation’ (e.g. Großklaus, 2015; Acharya, 2013)
emphasizes the agency of ‘local’ actors to translate global norms into specific settings and
feed back the results of these processes into global-level deliberations. Contesting the
applicability of abstract rules is a way for local actors to preserve their agency against external
dominance and encroachment (Acharya, 2011: 97). Translating global norms into specific
contexts needs local knowledge, legitimacy and authority, which gives ‘the governed’ an edge
9
See, e.g., Draude (2017), Zimmermann, Deitelhoff and Lesch (2017) and the other contributions to the special
issue.
20
over more removed higher-status actors (e.g. Birkholz et al., 2017). Hence, the larger the
socio-cultural ‘distance’ between a normative order and local social settings and the greater
the practical knowledge and legitimacy of local agents, the greater their scope for contestation
and norm-setting.
Second, low-status agents contest norms when high-status agents do not adhere to them,
thereby undercutting the legitimacy of the hierarchy. As Acharya puts it, Third World states
develop subsidiary norms ‘when confronted with great power hypocrisy’ (Acharya, 2011: 100,
emphasis in the original). When powerful actors violate norms and global institutions are
powerless to prevent such transgression, weaker actors who continue to play by the rules feel
marginalized and betrayed (Acharya, 2013: 469). Low-status agents may react to this not by
abandoning the normative order but through conspicuous adherence (Ayoub, 2014).
Conspicuous adherence is a status-seeking strategy that works best where there is a larger
gap between the intent of a norm and the extent by which it is followed by higher-status
actors. Acting as ‘model practitioners’ allows low-status agents to shame transgressors.
Third, institutions provide resources to help low-status agents participate in norm
contestation. Draude writes that ‘institutions can effectively balance power asymmetries, […]
giving voice to the governed’ (Draude, 2017: 578). Similar to the previous point, agents can
leverage existing institutions through conformity or subversion. In this process, inclusive and
participatory institutions provide more discursive and procedural resources attached to
membership privileges in terms of prescribed roles and protocol to low-status agents.
Fourth, building on the argument of Corbett, Xu and Weller, we expect that norm
entrepreneurs are more successful when they can exploit inconsistencies within and between
normative orders. Norm-breaking behavior can be justified by referring to other broadly
21
accepted norms. As Hurd’s case study of Libyan diplomacy against international sanctions
shows, such a sustained moral argument can be successful when the norms used as
justification (the ‘symbols of liberal internationalism’ in his example) are sufficiently strong
and broadly accepted (Hurd, 2005). In contrast, North Korean attempts to justify its nuclear
weapons programme are not seen as providing a sufficiently robust moral argument to accept
jeopardizing regional and global security.
Fifth, low-status agents can increase their leverage by mobilizing collective agency. The
examples by Corbett, Xu and Weller show how the creation of labels can give developing
countries a social role from which they can join in a normative dialogue. The ability of the
Global South to act coherently in global economic debates in the 1960s and 1970s, e.g.
through the Non-Aligned Movement, also contributed to its outsize influence. This also
includes alliances and advocacy by other, more powerful actors. Blakeley (2013) argues that
in the human rights regime, victims of oppression are not just marginalized but silenced
entirely, needing others to speak on their behalf.
4. Case Study: The g7+
To summarize: Our argument is that low-status agents can affect their own agency by
contesting the norms underpinning global hierarchies, but that, by doing so, they stabilize the
same hierarchies. We illustrate this with a case study of the g7+, a group of developing
countries that contested norms of international development cooperation. Over the past
decade, the g7+ have exerted a key influence in debates about peacebuilding and
development cooperation. They were able to generate a collective agency in global
negotiations and change norms that specify duties and roles assigned to donor countries. We
22
focus on the example of a group of low-status agents because it demonstrates how the
powerless have some agency even within a hierarchy that produces their subjectivities as
inferior in status and material resources. If our above argument is valid, we should observe (a)
the existence of an international hierarchy and how it produces agency, (b) low-status agents
using strategies of norm contestation, and (c) these normative claims having effects on the
agency of at least some agents involved. The result is that the hierarchy is modified somewhat
to reflect the positional and relational dynamics but is ultimately stabilized by low-status
agents engaging in marginal, not radical contestation.
The g7+ is a group of fragile states and conflict-affected countries, currently comprising twenty
of the poorest coutries on Earth, like Timor-Leste, the Democratic Republic of Congo or South
Sudan. These states are or have been affected by conflict and are all heavily dependent on
external aid. Their material power resources are negligible. And yet, the g7+ ‘has evolved as
the main counterpart of the OECD donor states in development forums such as the
International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS). It currently plays a
considerable role in the international bargaining on peace- and statebuilding goals, and is able
to influence development debates in general, for example around the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs)’ (Pospisil, 2017: 1417). The g7+ are an example how even low-
status agents in exceptionally unfavorable circumstances were able to develop a collective
agency that is much larger than the sum of its parts. The g7+ member states used norm
contestation to insist that other states follow the spirit, not merely the letter of commonly
held norms of participation and ownership in global development cooperation.
International hierarchies in the field of development cooperation are immediately obvious.
Even though few people still speak of a ‘North-South divide’, there are still huge material
23
inequalities between developed countries and most developing ones (Arrighi et al., 2003). The
practice of foreign assistance emerged in the early post-colonial era of the 1960s and quickly
developed into an autonomous field, contributing to a ‘re-hierarchisation of the international
system’ (Esteves and Assunção, 2014: 1776) split between ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’
countries.
The global development field is structured by a set of norms that creates two main roles for
state agents: donors (developed countries) and recipients (developing countries).
10
These
roles have specific expectations attached to them. Nowadays, donors are expected to adhere
to the ‘Pearson target’ of spending 0.7% of Gross National Income as Official Development Aid
(ODA) and to provide funding in a predictable manner while respecting national ownership of
development policies. But these obligations are mostly aspirational – no donor is seriously
punished for failing to meet them. Recipients, on the other hand, are subject to a multitude
of expectations, sometimes on pain of aid cuts if they are unmet, such as sticking to
‘development-oriented’ policies, accountability for the use and reporting of funds, effectively
coordinating different aid projects, plus a commitment to whatever development paradigm is
currently en vogue (such as ‘structural adjustment’, ‘good governance’, ‘pro-poor growth’,
‘state-building’ or ‘resilience’).
The donor-recipient relationship is the key relational dynamic of the development hierarchy.
Its manifest inequality becomes visible when analyzing the form of exchange (or lack thereof)
10
The current language of development is obfuscating the underlying hierarchy, e.g. by speaking of ‘recipients’
as ‘partner’ countries. The field is also no longer referred to as development ‘aid’ or ‘assistance’, both of
which imply charity and paternalism, but as development ‘cooperation’, suggesting a more equal footing. It
should be noted we are excluding more complex arrangements of trilateral or multilateral cooperation here.
Also, the era of ‘emerging donors’ and South-South cooperation since the 2000s has started to complicate
the picture somewhat (Quadir, 2013; Mawdsley, 2012).
24
within the relationship. Hattori points out that while loans and debt are economic exchanges
based on nominal equality, grants and acts of debt forgiveness ‘transform a relation of
domination into one of generosity and gratitude’ (Hattori, 2001: 640). Here, the generally
accepted social norm of reciprocity is substituted by a logic of gift giving. Such a one-sided gift
‘acts to affirm social hierarchy over time. Where the norms of reciprocity are indefinitely
suspended, gift giving signals the creation and maintenance of relations of superiority and
inferiority rather than the relative equality of gift exchange’ (Mawdsley, 2012: 148). These
norms are formalized and codified in a variety of institutions and agreements, like the OECD
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) guidelines, World Bank lending rules, development
discourses and policies at the UN, and international compacts like the OECD’s Paris
Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and its subsequent Accra Agenda for Action.
This system has undergone a series of crises and transformations since the mid- to late 1990s
(Esteves and Assunção, 2014: 1780-1781). The market-oriented policies of the Washington
Consensus, which had dominated the field since the early 1980s, became contested and
international development was riven by discussions about how to deal with fragile states and
‘aid orphans’ while ensuring the effective use of aid payments (Baranyi and Desrosiers, 2012).
Donor roles and donor-recipient relations had to be renegotiated: ‘Taken together, these
questions led to the re-articulation of the field’s doxa in terms of a renewed partnership
between donors and recipients established throughout the aid effectiveness agenda’ (Esteves
and Assunção, 2014: 1781). The aid effectiveness agenda was expressed in several donor-led
initiatives to improve the quality of aid, such as the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness
and the 2007 OECD Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and
Situations (the ‘OECD Principles’). These documents had been ‘created by donors, for donors’
(Wyeth, 2012: 8) with little input from recipient countries (Baranyi and Desrosiers, 2012: 443).
25
This was difficult to reconcile with growing calls for ‘national ownership’ in development
cooperation (Booth, 2012), e.g. in Millennium Development Goal No. 8, the creation of a
Global Partnership for Development, which was never truly translated into practice. This
attempt to re-stabilize donor-recipient relations was undercut by the 2008 economic crisis as
austerity politics in the North and the indebtedness of the South led to decreasing ODA flows,
opening the door for more South-South cooperation.
It is against this backdrop that the g7+ emerged. Participating states were motivated not just
by the prospect of better aid conditions but also wanted recognition as equal partners in
development – a goal that was intimately tied to their status as being lesser than developed
countries in the North (similar to the argument made by Nel, 2010). Recipient countries
started to organize around the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra in
2008. The Forum established, among other things, the IDPS which – through a series of
consultations held 2009-10 in several developing countries – was the first body that brought
together OECD and non-OECD donors, international and regional organizations, civil society,
and conflict-affected countries (Wyeth, 2012: 8). In the process, ‘it became apparent, through
informal conversations between representatives of fragile states […] that many fragile states
faced common issues and had common concerns regarding development assistance’ (Fenby,
2013: 36). The g7+ was formally founded before the IDPS meeting in Dili, Timor-Leste in April
2010 and quickly established itself as the voice of recipient countries in further discussions.
The ‘New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States’ was negotiated by g7+ governments, OECD
donors organized under the umbrella of the International Network on Conflict-Affected and
Fragile States, and other development actors, and was later endorsed by the participants at
the 2011 Fourth High-Level Panel on Aid Effectiveness in Busan. Many of the initial g7+
26
members volunteered as pilot countries for projects initiated under the New Deal (Nussbaum
et al., 2012: 563; Paffenholz, 2015).
In these deliberations, representatives of g7+ states contested three sets of norms. The first
are processual understandings about how global development cooperation should be
governed based on more general norms of participation in multistakeholder governance
which require that affected communities should be included in decision-making processes
(Eckersley, 2000). This demand had not been met by the donor-driven discussions up until
2007, which was strongly criticized by g7+ representatives. The second are regulatory norms
that proscribe and prescribe certain kinds of behavior in aid relationships. The Paris
Declaration and OECD Principles ‘generated a corpus of norms and guidelines to orient
international engagement in fragile contexts’ (Baranyi and Desrosiers, 2012: 443) that were
focused on donor behavior. But g7+ countries frequently referred to the norm of ‘national
ownership’ (da Costa, 2012; Fenby, 2013), i.e. the belief that development projects should to
be run as much as possible by actors from the recipient country – an expectation to which
everyone in the development community pays lip service, if only with varying degrees of
conviction. Pospisil further notes a bit of norm entrepreneurship in this endeavor, ‘to (re-)
establish the voice of government elites against the threat of an increasing focus on the local
in international interventions’ (Pospisil, 2017: 1422). The third are technical standards that
govern how the ‘fragility’ of a state is measured. The g7+ pushed back against the established
practice of donor-defined indicators, instead arguing that recipient countries are better placed
to assess state fragility (McCandless, 2013; Rocha De Siqueira, 2014).
The g7+ used all five of the strategies of norm contestation discussed in the previous section.
They:
27
• positioned themselves as translators of global norms about state fragility into local
contexts and fed their interpretations of norms into the global dialogue,
• used the conspicuous adherence to principles of good behavior in donor-recipient
relationships to raise their own status in the face of hypocritical behavior by high-
status agents,
• used discursive and procedural resources from international institutions (the Forum
and the IDPS),
• referred to broadly accepted norms of inclusion and participation in global governance
to highlight inconsistencies within the normative order of development cooperation,
and
• mobilized a collective agency to increase their leverage.
The g7+ ‘represents the first time that a group of the world's most fragile and conflict-ridden
countries has come together in a coalition around a common purpose in any forum’ (Wyeth,
2012: 9). The g7+ frequently employed speech acts, knowledge claims and technical expertise
to contest norms. Their tactics can best be summarized as constructive subversion in that the
g7+ countries tried to change development cooperation from the inside rather than seeking
to revolutionize the system. The subversion is evident in the name which humorously uses ‘a
lower case “g” to distinguish this grouping from the G7 group of large, industrialised nations’
(Fenby, 2013: 33). The group describes itself as a gathering of ‘fragile states’ – a heavily
securitised phrase which they use affirmatively to exert pressure on donors (Lambach, 2006;
Holm and Sending, 2018).
11
11
This is consistent with the strategy of social creativity as identified by Larson and Shevchenko in their research
on social mobility in status hierarchies: ‘If the status hierarchy appears to be legitimate and stable, the group
28
Where Corbett, Xu and Weller argued that developing states use norm contestation as a
means to achieve development by overturning global hierarchies, the g7+ preferred to work
within the system for positional improvement and marginal changes. The main aim of g7+
countries was not to overturn the system of global development cooperation but to decrease
their reliance on donor support. They spoke out in favor of policies that would help fragile
states and presented themselves as model recipients. g7+ representatives are ‘fluent in the
vocabulary of international aid, throwing out phrases like “stakeholders” and “capacity
development” with practiced ease’ (Wyeth, 2012: 9-10), so their acts of dissent – when they
occur – carry greater weight. The story of how the group came about reveals how institutions
can create opportunities for low-status agents. The conversations that led to the founding the
g7+ ‘often took place on the sidelines of meetings funded and organised by donor nations or
multilateral agencies […]. There was, however, no formal mechanism by which to discuss these
matters independently of their donors and multi-lateral development agencies’ (Fenby, 2013:
36).
The g7+ has been able to influence global norms and thereby the agency of donors and
recipients. For one, their participation was instrumental to achieve a ‘new standard of
behaviour for DAC and emerging donors within the G-20, as well as for partner countries
within the G-77’ (Nussbaum et al., 2012: 561) in the New Deal. The New Deal has led to a more
participatory and transparent decision-making process about peacebuilding (Donais and
McCandless, 2016: 305; von Engelhardt, 2018: 61), although it has received its share of
criticism especially from ‘emerging’, non-OECD donors like China or Brazil (Hearn, 2018: 217-
may exercise social creativity by reevaluating a negative trait as positive or identifying a new criterion for
evaluation on which the group ranks highly’ (Larson and Shevchenko, 2014: 39-40).
29
218). For donors, the New Deal stipulates transparency requirements, a commitment to
predictable aid payments and a focus on particular kinds of support, while recipients are
expected to build administrative capacity, expand domestic revenue collection and strengthen
monitoring and oversight mechanisms for public expenditure (Nussbaum et al., 2012: 562-
563). The New Deal was also influential in later discussions about the SDGs, the 2030 Agenda
and Financing for Development (Hearn, 2016: 23, 26).
In other words, the g7+ countries were not only able to develop a collective agency for
themselves, they also managed to change norms that specify duties and roles assigned to
wealthier higher-status agents. They were able to achieve this by eagerly agreeing to specific
duties as aid recipients and implementing these requirements domestically. The g7+ were
especially influential in pushing their interpretation of ‘fragility’ in technical discussions. They
were able to dominate the agenda of the Indicator Working Group of the IDPS (McCandless,
2013: 237-240) and although the resulting list of common indicators has gained little traction,
assessments based on the so-called ‘Fragility Spectrum’, an alternative approach developed
by the g7+ themselves, have received much more buy-in (Donais and McCandless, 2016: 299).
The g7+ have also expanded their thematic scope beyond its ‘core’ fields of state fragility and
peacebuilding and have become active in different discussions in the field of development
cooperation, such as the deliberations about the SDGs, where they were instrumental in
getting SDG 16 (‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies’) into the final catalogue of goals
(Rocha De Siqueira, 2019: 51-57). The g7+ are also steadily developing more organizational
capacity. The g7+ Charter was endorsed at the 2018 Ministerial Meeting and is now in the
process of being ratified by member states. Most recently, the UN General Assembly in 2019
30
granted observer status to the g7+, thereby recognizing the g7+ as an intergovernmental
organization with legal personality.
The g7+ has had a measurable effect on the hierarchy of international development
cooperation. While still fundamentally unequal, the language of ownership and partnership is
being put into practice more than it was before the formation of the Group. Given their starkly
limited capabilities, the g7+ were surprisingly effective. They have ‘changed the debate on
fragility by defining it in their own terms, based on their reading on their own context, and
ensuring that conversations about development in fragile states also focus on the importance
of security, justice, and legitimate political processes’ (Wyeth, 2012: 11). The g7+ were able
to achieve this not through resistance or non-compliance but by using ‘the very language and
tools of western states to fashion a new form of post-liberal discourse’ (Pospisil, 2017: 1417).
They do not contest their classification as ‘fragile states’ but advance a different reading of
what ‘fragility’ means, demanding country ownership and leadership of development efforts
(Rocha De Siqueira, 2014; McCandless, 2013). This ‘enables the g7+ members to prolong
international assistance while keeping at bay interventions aimed at circumventing the
national political level’ (Pospisil, 2017: 1426).
But as much as this represents a success against all odds for the g7+, it also shows the limits
of what developing countries can hope to achieve by working within the system. As low-status
agents, the g7+ have become a disproportionately influential presence in global development
cooperation but only on the condition that they do not question its fundamental tenets and
only by conspicuous adherence to dominant discourses. The g7+ have been able to improve
their own agency by strengthening their voice in global policy discussions on development
cooperation and have also placed limitations on the agency of donors. This, as well as the rise
31
of emerging donors has somewhat attenuated the inequality of the development hierarchy,
but a more substantial, revolutionary overhaul of international development hierarchies was
and is beyond the reach of the g7+. The upshot has been that the g7+ has stabilized global
hierarchies even as it has sought to change the rules of the game. As Ward puts it, ‘status-
seeking often requires that state behave in ways that ratify and reproduce the institutions and
norms that constitute the status quo order’ (Ward, 2017: 5). This is exactly what happened
here: g7+ activism has changed how development cooperation is conducted but has thereby
re-legitimized the field and its constitutive hierarchy.
5. Conclusion
The international system is made up of hierarchies in which agents act but which are also
shaped by the actions of those very same agents. With this article we seek to contribute to
the new hierarchy studies by offering a theoretical framework how hierarchies are maintained
and dynamically restructured, focusing on mechanisms of norm contestation that agents use
to affect these hierarchies in their favor. This strategy is open to low-status agents, albeit with
some important limitations. While these agents are rarely able to fundamentally change
international hierarchies, they can still exert some influence on them and their effects.
However, unless low-status agents pursue radical strategies they end up stabilizing the very
hierarchies that disadvantage them.
We conclude that a focus on norms in the making, upholding and changing of hierarchies is
useful in understanding how agents can sustain or improve their relative power position in the
international system. We argue that one of the ways that powerful agents can exercise and
maintain hierarchies is by changing norms through which agents and agency are constituted.
32
Power over norms can be a key mechanism through which agents exercise power over other
agents in complex settings. This is not domination in a one-to-one, command-and-obedience
kind of way – it is more diffuse, less intrusive, and therefore less visible.
International hierarchies are not only sustained through overt repression, military
intervention and hard power. These forms of power are employed where needed but are of
limited utility – they are very costly and blunted by overuse. It is much better and more
attractive for agents atop international hierarchies to employ more subtle forms of power.
12
Agents can play an active role in the construction and contestation of norms. These options
exist not just for high-status agents but also for low-status agents. Our argument rests on an
agent-structure ontology of hierarchy that captures both the productive effects of hierarchic
structures as well as the capacity of agents to change, resist or accommodate such structures.
This approach opens the way towards a more dynamic conception of hierarchy, focusing on
their adaptibility instead of portraying them as static and exogenously given.
Clearly, additional work will be necessary to clarify in greater detail how norms, agency,
hierarchy and structure are linked. The empirical evidence of the g7+ suggests that our
approach can be applied even to unlikely cases. We therefore would like to encourage further
empirical work aimed at explaining the dynamics of hierarchy management through norm
contestation.
12
Farrell and Newman (2019) introduce the concept of ‘weaponized interdependence’ to make a similar point
but focus more on infrastructural sources of power.
33
References
Acharya A. (2011) Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders: Sovereignty, Regionalism, and Rule-
Making in the Third World. International Studies Quarterly 55: 95-123.
Acharya A. (2013) The R2P and Norm Diffusion: Towards A Framework of Norm Circulation.
Global Responsibility to Protect 5: 466-479.
Arrighi G, Silver BJ and Brewer BD. (2003) Industrial convergence, globalization, and the
persistence of the North-South divide. Studies in Comparative International Development
38: 3.
Ayoob M. (1998) Subaltern Realism: International Relations Meets the Third World. In:
Neuman SG (ed) International Relations Theory and the Third World. Houndmills, London:
Macmillan, 31-54.
Ayoub PM. (2014) Contested norms in new-adopter states: International determinants of
LGBT rights legislation. European Journal of International Relations 21: 293-322.
Baranyi S and Desrosiers M-E. (2012) Development cooperation in fragile states: filling or
perpetuating gaps? Conflict, Security & Development 12: 443-459.
Barder A. (2015) Empire Within: International Hierarchy and its Imperial Laboratories of
Governance, London: Routledge.
Barnett M and Duvall R. (2005) Power in International Politics. International Organization 59:
39-75.
Baumann R and Dingwerth K. (2014) Global governance vs empire: Why world order moves
towards heterarchy and hierarchy. Journal of International Relations and Development 18:
104-128.
34
Bially Mattern J and Zarakol A. (2016) Hierarchies in World Politics. International Organization
70: 623-654.
Birkholz S, Scherf T and Schroeder UC. (2017) Creating room for manoeuvre: domestic
repertoires of action in international post-war interventions. Third World Thematics: A
TWQ Journal 2: 621-636.
Björkdahl A. (2013) Ideas and Norms in Swedish Peace Policy. Swiss Political Science Review
19: 322-337.
Blakeley R. (2013) Human rights, state wrongs, and social change: the theory and practice of
emancipation. Review of International Studies 39: 599-619.
Bloomfield A. (2015) Norm antipreneurs and theorising resistance to normative change.
Review of International Studies 42: 310-333.
Booth D. (2012) Aid effectiveness: bringing country ownership (and politics) back in. Conflict,
Security & Development 12: 537-558.
Brown W. (2006) Africa and International Relations: A Comment on IR Theory, Anarchy and
Statehood. Review of International Studies 32: 119-143.
Butcher CR and Griffiths RD. (2017) Between Eurocentrism and Babel: A Framework for the
Analysis of States, State Systems, and International Orders. International Studies Quarterly
61: 328-336.
Buzan B and Albert M. (2010) Differentiation: A sociological approach to international
relations theory. European Journal of International Relations 16: 315-337.
Cooley A. (2005) Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military
Occupation, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
35
Corbett J, Xu Y-c and Weller P. (2019) Norm entrepreneurship and diffusion ‘from below’ in
international organisations: How the competent performance of vulnerability generates
benefits for small states. Review of International Studies 45: 647-668.
da Costa H. (2012) g7+ and the New Deal: Country-Led and Country-Owned Initiatives: a
Perspective from Timor-Leste. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 7: 96-102.
Donais T and McCandless E. (2016) International peace building and the emerging inclusivity
norm. Third World Quarterly 38: 291-310.
Donnelly J. (2009) Rethinking political structures: from ‘ordering principles’ to ‘vertical
differentiation’ – and beyond. International Theory 1: 49-86.
Donnelly J. (2012) The differentiation of international societies: An approach to structural
international theory. European Journal of International Relations 18: 151-176.
Draude A. (2017) The agency of the governed in transfer and diffusion studies. Third World
Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2: 577-587.
Dunne T. (2003) Society and Hierarchy in International Relations. International Relations 17:
303-320.
Eckersley R. (2000) Deliberative democracy, ecological representation and risk: Towards a
democracy of the affected. In: Saward M (ed) Democratic innovation: Deliberation,
representation and association. London: Routledge, 117-132.
Elden S. (2009) Why is the World Divided Territorially? In: Edkins J and Zehfuss M (eds) Global
Politics: A New Introduction. London: Routledge, 192-219.
Epstein C, Lindemann T and Sending OJ. (2018) Frustrated sovereigns: the agency that makes
the world go around. Review of International Studies 44: 787-804.
36
Esteves P and Assunção M. (2014) South–South cooperation and the international
development battlefield: between the OECD and the UN. Third World Quarterly 35: 1775-
1790.
Farrell H and Newman AL. (2019) Weaponized Interdependence. International Security 44: 42-
+.
Fenby S. (2013) The g7+ Group of Fragile States: Towards Better International Engagement
and Accountability in Aid Delivery to Fragile Nations. In: Kingsbury D (ed) Critical Reflections
on Development. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 33-49.
Finnemore M and Sikkink K. (1998) International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.
International Organization 52: 887-917.
Goh E. (2008) Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional
Security Strategies. International Security 32: 113-157.
Großklaus M. (2015) Appropriation and the dualism of human rights: understanding the
contradictory impact of gender norms in Nigeria. Third World Quarterly 36: 1253-1267.
Grovogui S. (2006) Beyond Eurocentrism and anarchy: memories of international order and
institutions, Houndmills: Palgrave.
Hattori T. (2001) Reconceptualizing Foreign Aid. Review of International Political Economy 8:
633-660.
Havercroft J and Prichard A. (2017) Anarchy and International Relations theory: A
reconsideration. Journal of International Political Theory 13: 252-265.
Hay C. (2002) Political Analysis. A Critical Introduction, Houndmills: Palgrave.
Hearn S. (2016) Independent Review of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States. New
York: Centre on International Cooperation.
Hearn S. (2018) A new deal to end conflict and poverty. Global Social Policy 18: 216-221.
37
Hobson JM. (2014) The Twin Self-Delusions of IR: Why ‘Hierarchy’ and Not ‘Anarchy’ is the
Core Concept of IR. Millennium - Journal of International Studies 42: 557-575.
Hobson JM and Sharman JC. (2005) The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing
the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change. European Journal of International
Relations 11: 63-98.
Holm M and Sending OJ. (2018) States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated
regime of sovereignty. Review of International Studies 44: 829-847.
Hurd I. (2005) The Strategic Use of Liberal Internationalism: Libya and the UN Sanctions, 1992-
2003. International Organization 59: 495-526.
Hurd I. (2007) Breaking and Making Norms: American Revisionism and Crises of Legitimacy.
International Politics 44: 194-213.
Jepperson RL, Wendt A and Katzenstein PJ. (1996) Norms, Identity, and Culture in National
Security. In: Katzenstein PJ (ed) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in
World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 33-75.
Katzenstein PJ. (1996) Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security. In:
Katzenstein PJ (ed) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1-32.
Keene E. (2007) A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy: British Treaty-
Making Against the Slave Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century. International Organization
61: 311-339.
Koschut S. (2018) The power of (emotion) words: on the importance of emotions for social
constructivist discourse analysis in IR. Journal of International Relations and Development
21: 495-522.
38
Koschut S. (2020) Emotion, Discourse, and Power in World Politics. In: Koschut S (ed) The
Power of Emotions in World Politics. Routledge.
Kowert P and Legro J. (1996) Norms, Identity, and Their Limits: A Theoretical Reprise. In:
Katzenstein PJ (ed) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics.
New York: Columbia University Press, 451-497.
Kratochwil F and Ruggie JG. (1986) International organization: a state of the art on an art of
the state. International Organization 40: 753-775.
Krause K and Latham A. (1998) Constructing non‐proliferation and arms control: The norms of
Western practice. Contemporary Security Policy 19: 23-54.
Kustermans J. (2019) Gift-giving as a Source of International Authority. The Chinese Journal of
International Politics 12: 395-426.
Lake DA. (2009) Hierarchy in International Relations, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Lake DA. (2017) Laws and Norms in the Making of International Hierarchies. In: Zarakol A (ed)
Hierarchies in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17-42.
Lambach D. (2006) Security, Development and the Australian Security Discourse. Australian
Journal of Political Science 41: 407-418.
Larson DW, Paul TV and Wohlforth WC. (2014) Status and World Order. In: Paul TV, Larson
DW and Wohlforth WC (eds) Status in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 3-29.
Larson DW and Shevchenko A. (2014) Managing Rising Powers: The Role of Status Concerns.
In: Paul TV, Larson DW and Wohlforth WC (eds) Status in World Politics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 33-57.
Lonsdale J. (2000) Editorial: Agency in Tight Corners: Narrative and Initiative in African History.
Journal of African Cultural Studies 13: 5-16.
39
Löw M. (2008) The Constitution of Space: The Structuration of Spaces Through the
Simultaneity of Effect and Perception. European Journal of Social Theory 11: 25-49.
MacDonald PK. (2017) Embedded authority: a relational network approach to hierarchy in
world politics. Review of International Studies 44: 128-150.
Mawdsley E. (2012) From Recipients to Donors: Emerging powers and the changing
development landscape, London: Zed.
McCandless E. (2013) Wicked Problems in Peacebuilding and Statebuilding: Making Progress
in Measuring Progress Through the New Deal. Global Governance 19: 227-248.
McConaughey M, Musgrave P and Nexon DH. (2018) Beyond anarchy: logics of political
organization, hierarchy, and international structure. International Theory 10: 181-218.
Musgrave P and Nexon DH. (2018) Defending Hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean:
Symbolic Capital and Political Dominance in Early Modern China and the Cold War.
International Organization 72: 591-626.
Nel P. (2010) Redistribution and recognition: what emerging regional powers want. Review of
International Studies 36: 951-974.
Neuman SG. (1998) International Relations Theory and the Third World. Houndmills, London:
Macmillan.
Nexon DH. (2017) Introduction. In: Nexon DH (ed) Symposium: Comparing International
Systems in World History: Anarchy, Hierarchy, and Culture. . International Studies Quarterly
Online Symposium, Harvard Dataverse, 1-2.
Nussbaum T, Zorbas E and Koros M. (2012) A new deal for engagement in fragile states.
Conflict, Security & Development 12: 559-587.
Paffenholz T. (2015) Inclusive Politics: Lessons From and for the New Deal. Journal of
Peacebuilding & Development 10: 84-89.
40
Paul TV, Larson DW and Wohlforth WC. (2014) Status in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Pospisil J. (2017) ‘Unsharing’ sovereignty: g7+ and the politics of international statebuilding.
International Affairs 93: 1417-1434.
Pouliot V. (2014) Setting Status in Stone: The Negotiation of International Institutional
Privileges. In: Paul TV, Larson DW and Wohlforth WC (eds) Status in World Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 192-215.
Pouliot V. (2016) Hierarchy in practice: Multilateral diplomacy and the governance of
international security. European Journal of International Security 1: 5-26.
Quadir F. (2013) Rising Donors and the New Narrative of ‘South–South’ Cooperation: what
prospects for changing the landscape of development assistance programmes? Third World
Quarterly 34: 321-338.
Renshon J. (2017) Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Rocha De Siqueira I. (2014) Measuring and managing ‘state fragility’: the production of
statistics by the World Bank, Timor-Leste and the g7+. Third World Quarterly 35: 268-283.
Rocha De Siqueira I. (2019) Independent Review of the g7+. Rio de Janeiro: BRICS Policy Center
– International Relations Institute (PUC-Rio).
Sandholtz W. (2008) Dynamics of International Norm Change: Rules against Wartime Plunder.
European Journal of International Relations 14: 101-131.
Schulz C-A. (2018) Hierarchy salience and social action: disentangling class, status, and
authority in world politics. International Relations 33: 88-108.
Sharman JC. (2012) International hierarchies and contemporary imperial governance: A tale
of three kingdoms. European Journal of International Relations 19: 189-207.
41
Stewart MA. (2017) Beyond the State: Ordering as a Scalable Process. In: Nexon DH (ed)
Symposium: Comparing International Systems in World History: Anarchy, Hierarchy, and
Culture. . International Studies Quarterly Online Symposium, Harvard Dataverse, 14-16.
Subotic J and Zarakol A. (2013) Cultural intimacy in International Relations. European Journal
of International Relations 19: 915-938.
Thakur R. (2004) Developing Countries and the Intervention-Sovereignty Debate. In: Price RM
and Zacher MW (eds) The United Nations and Global Security. Houndmills: Macmillan, 193-
208.
Towns AE. (2012) Norms and Social Hierarchies: Understanding International Policy Diffusion
“From Below”. International Organization 66: 179-209.
Towns AE and Rumelili B. (2017) Taking the pressure: Unpacking the relation between norms,
social hierarchies, and social pressures on states. European Journal of International
Relations 23: 756-779.
Vitalis R. (2010) The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and Its Laws of Race
Development. Comparative Studies in Society and History 52: 909-938.
von Engelhardt M. (2018) International Development Organizations and Fragile States: Law
and Disorder, Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Ward S. (2017) Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Wight C. (2006) Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolf R. (2019) Taking interaction seriously: Asymmetrical roles and the behavioral
foundations of status. European Journal of International Relations: 1354066119837338.
42
Wyeth V. (2012) Knights in Fragile Armor: The Rise of the “G7+”. Global Governance: A Review
of Multilateralism and International Organizations 18: 7-12.
Zarakol A. (2010) After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Zarakol A. (2017a) Hierarchies in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zarakol A. (2017b) Theorising Hierarchies: An Introduction. In: Zarakol A (ed) Hierarchies in
World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-14.
Zarakol A. (2018) Sovereign equality as misrecognition. Review of International Studies 44:
848-862.
Zimmermann L, Deitelhoff N and Lesch M. (2017) Unlocking the agency of the governed:
contestation and norm dynamics. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2: 691-708.
