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Structural Inequality in the International System : The Growth of International Organization Networks

Please do not cite without permission. All comments are welcome. 2 INTRODUCTION Scholars of world politics are feeling optimistic. The international system is characterized by an increasingly dense network of international organizations (IOs) that shape politics. With global economic inequality rampant, many are hopeful that pervasive institutionalization of global governance makes the world a better place, preventing war Keohane 1984). IOs, scholars tell us, offset threats of all kinds posed by international anarchy and national sovereignty. This optimism masks another face of international relations. IOs also create social networks that generate relationships of inequality among nations, placing certain states in privileged positions over others and awarding some greater prestige. These structural inequalities matter; they are known to shape political life in important ways, at times providing incentives for conflict, domination, and even war (Dorussen and Ward 2006; Hafner-Burton and Montgomery 2006). As a pervasive feature of modern politics, these inequalities are also evolutionary. Yet as a subject of political inquiry, their formation and evolution have for the most part been ignored in favor of their effects. Most researchers see IOs as tools that moderate the existing anarchical structure of international relations, not as features that generate structure and thereby influence states' behaviors. Structural realist theories of political science argue that IOs are epiphenomenonal to state relations (Mearsheimer 1994/95),while standard theories of sociology contend that IOs create a universalistic world polity (Meyer et al. 1997).