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Although the international system is generally anarchic, sovereign inequalitiesâ€"in other words, hierarchiesâ€"do exist among states and they play an important role in governing the system. But while IR theory readily accepts material inequality and even ideational or normative inequality, it resists admitting the existence of formal, authority inequalities. This paper addresses this blind-spot by showing how authority inequalities can be produced through control over membership. As with economic and military capabilities, membership is a valuable resource whose uneven distribution formally stratifies the international system, dividing actors into groups and endowing them with differential authority rights. Furthermore, because control over membership can be used to stratify states, it turns out to be itself a significant tool of international governance. I pursue this argument by teasing out three concentric levels at which membership is decided, corresponding to three levels of institutionalized inequality: The first, outermost level is the boundary between system insiders and outsiders. The “inside” group consists of recognized states while the “outside” group consists of non-state actors and non-recognized states. The second level of membership concerns the flow of actors across this system boundary. At this level decisions are made as to which actors are allowed to join (and which are made to exit) the international system of sovereign states. The third, innermost, level is within the system and concerns the distribution of authority rights among members. Although most international organizations today profess their belief in equality as a basic principle of international life, most in fact formally operate with institutionalized inequalitiesâ€"both in terms of membership rules and membership rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of international relations (IR) have long recognized that the state does not exist in vacuous space but is embedded in an international system that is several centuries old. Although states exist in anarchy, the system nevertheless represents an ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do international institutions originate and develop? The goal of this paper is to expand our understanding of the role of design and evolution in the development of international institutions and, especially, to understand how the two processes operate together. Rational design examines the properties of existing institutions under the implicit assumption that adjustment to institutional equilibria is relatively rapid and unproblematic. It thus focuses on a comparative statics analysis that links the interests of states and the problems they face to the particular design features of institutions. But rational design does not address the process whereby institutions are actually created or how institutions are adapted or changed over time. While design is important in explaining some international institutions, others have evolved without conscious planning or design. We argue that the evolutionary analogy includes an explicit dynamic mechanism of change and therefore offers a potentially powerful way to account for the persistence, adaptation, and abandonment of international institutions. Our goal is emphatically not to draw a biological analogy to the development of international institutions but rather to focus on the more general Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms of variation and selection. After developing the evolutionary analogy, we consider how design and evolutionary approaches are combined in the development of international institutions, both in theory and practice. On the one hand, experience provides an ongoing test for institutional designs which are sometimes sorted in a process that can be understood partly in terms of evolutionary mechanisms of selection. On the other hand, because they are aware of the inherent limits of their designs, rational designers will therefore design institutions that can adapt and respond to unanticipated elements in their environment. In this way, design and evolution are interwoven in the development of international institutions and theoretical analysis is best-served by combining them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diplomatic rituals and ceremonies that surround official interstate interaction are often dismissed by scholars as cheap talk or mere window dressing. Rituals and ceremonies concerning who sits where, how oaths are to be sworn, ceremonies of signing, ceremonies of international visits, rules of precedent, and so on seem trivial at best and vainglorious at worst. This paper argues that the rituals and ceremonies surrounding diplomatic interaction are much more than mere window-dressing. In particular, it argues that they can accomplish three different things: 1) they can act as effective signals of power, 2) they can institutionalize power relations, thereby giving power relations added stability, and 3) they can give certain actors access to procedural privileges (such as agenda-setting power). The paper explains what each of these effects means, how rituals accomplish them, and which rituals can accomplish them under what circumstances. Rituals of conduct are not just niceties that have no impact on substantive politics. Rather, through ritual and ceremony states compete over and institutionalize power. Moreover, by constraining states, ritual and ceremony exert a powerful ordering and disciplining influence on the international system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of the fifteenth-seventeenth century origins of diplomacy, this paper argues that diplomatic practices act as the regulative devices controlling the acquisition and distribution of sovereignty in the international system. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]