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The variety of institutionalised inequalities: Stratificatory interlinkages in interwar international society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2019

Thomas Müller
Thomas Müller*
Affiliation:
Bielefeld University, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: thomas.mueller@uni-bielefeld.de
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Abstract

This article argues that the research on institutionalised inequalities pays too little attention to competing understandings of stratification and the variety of interlinkages between the patterns of stratification and the institutions of international society. Building on the English School and theories of stratification, it develops an analytical framework that conceptualises these ‘stratificatory interlinkages’ as a twofold decision: firstly for a coupling – instead of a decoupling – of institutional characteristics to patterns of stratification and secondly for a specific classification scheme and type of interlinkage. The article draws on empirical examples from the League of Nations and other interwar international institutions to demonstrate that different understandings of stratification and classification schemes were used for different institutional purposes, for example, voting rights and the apportionment of budget expenses. In addition, it proposes four analytical dimensions that allow mapping the variety of classification schemes and types of interlinkages that were chosen for institutionalised inequalities. The dimensions relate to the composition of the reference group, the decision-making about the classification scheme, the institutional purposes, and the institutional form of the interlinkage. The variety of stratificatory interlinkages entails a more variable and diverse relation between stratification and institutions than usually assumed.

Keywords

StratificationInequalitiesStratificatory InterlinkagesInstitutionsInterwar Period
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 669 - 688
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2019 

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References

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22 For instance, Keene focuses on the level of primary institutions and international order and Pouliot (International Pecking Orders) on the reproduction of ‘pecking orders’ through multilateral practices. Moreover, the literature on governance by numbers / indicators focuses on the effects of quantifying governance practices of secondary institutions on patterns of stratification. See, for instance, Broome, André and Quirk, Joel, ‘Governing the world at a distance: the practice of global benchmarking’, Review of International Studies, 41:5 (2015), pp. 819–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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37 Ibid., p. 68.

38 Ibid., pp. 23–60. Smuts was then also appointed as one of the two representatives of the British Empire in the League Commission at the peace conference (with Lord Cecil as the second representative).

39 Ibid., p. 41.

40 Quoted in Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume One, p. 162. Hymans, who represented a state that had strongly suffered from German aggression, assumed the role of a key defender of the rights of smaller states during the conference. See Marks, Sally, Paul Hymans, Belgium. Makers of the Modern World: the Peace Conferences of 1919–23 and their Aftermath (London: Haus Publishing, 2010)Google Scholar.

41 See the arguments, especially of the Brazilian delegate Pessoa, in the third and ninth commission meeting (see the minutes in Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Volume Two, pp. 260, 302, 337–8). In the meeting with the neutral states, Chile likewise proposed a non-great powers-based electorate (see ibid., p. 624).

42 Ibid., pp. 302, 625, 634.

43 While ‘great powers’ semantics were omnipresent in the committee's discussions and draft Covenants, the final draft did not use the notion but referred to ‘Principal Allied and Associated Powers’ (Article 4).

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56 Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (LoN OJ, February 1920), p. 9.

57 See Pedersen, The Guardians, pp. 261–86. As Pedersen notes, Iraq effectively remained a British client state despite its newly recognised formal independence.

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69 See Riches, Majority Rule in International Organization, pp. 281–7.

70 See ibid., pp. 256–7.

71 See Basdevant, ‘Unions internationales’, p. 715.

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73 See Riches, Majority Rule in International Organization, p. 234 and Basdevant, ‘Unions internationales’, p. 715.

74 See Ames, The League of Nations, p. 23.

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76 See Koo, Wellington, Voting Procedures in International Political Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947), p. 79Google Scholar.

77 See for instance Clark, Hegemony in International Society, Bukovansky et al., Special Responsibilities; Fehl, ‘Unequal power’; and Pouliot, ‘Setting status in stone’. Bially Mattern and Zarakol, ‘Hierarchies in world politics’ likewise seem to equate institutionalised inequalities primarily with authority relations.

78 Fehl and Freistein, ‘Institutional Mechanisms’, p. 30.

79 Bukovansky et al., Special Responsibilities focus on ‘special responsibilities’, but essentially conceptualise them as legitimate power, and thus neglect the differences in the legitimacy of rights- and duty-oriented stratificatory interlinkages. While Fehl and Freistein (‘Institutional Mechanisms’) move beyond the authority-relations focus of the hierarchy literature by treating institutionalised inequalities as distributions of goods, they too miss these differences in legitimacy.

80 See Pouliot, ‘Setting status in stone’.