Hierarchy and hegemony in global governance

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Christopher Daase

The project explored the question of how power inequalities in the international system – in particular the dominant position of the United States – are reflected in the institutional design of global governance. The main focus was on various forms of hierarchization of global governance institutions, which have been described many times in recent years. For example, there is a trend towards informal, non-legally binding agreements, cooperation in groups of “like-minded” states and the establishment of law in the forum of the UN Security Council. These forms of international rule-making and informal governance, which can be observed in policy areas as diverse as trade, arms control and counter-terrorism, are particularly advantageous for powerful actors and especially for the USA as a hegemonic power and are therefore discussed by international law scholars under the collective term “hegemonic international law”. The project examined a number of important questions with regard to the causes and consequences of this development, which have so far been neglected in the literature on the subject:

(1) Is there a long-term trend towards hierarchical forms of global governance across all policy fields, or can a more complex pattern be identified?

(2) Why do different forms of hegemonic governance institutions develop in different historical periods and in different policy fields? This question ties in with more recent approaches in international relations theory that reconceptualize “hierarchy” as a form of institutional cooperation consciously chosen by states and thus as a dependent variable.

(3) How effective is hegemonic governance? Contrary to an assumption implicit in the current debate on hegemony and governance, hegemonic states cannot shape international institutions at will. In fact, the impact of hegemonic governance depends significantly on how non-hegemonic states react to the initiatives of a hegemon. The question of to what extent, why and in what form the weaker states in the system support or block hegemonic forms of global governance is therefore of central importance.

These questions were clarified on the basis of a broad quantitative analysis of the historical development of hierarchical forms of global governance in conjunction with selected individual case studies. The case studies dealt, for example, with initiatives such as the “Proliferation Security Initiative” launched by the USA or UN Security Council Resolution 1540.

The project’s most important publications include:
*Daase, Christopher (2009): “Die Informalisierung internationaler Politik – Beobachtungen zum Stand der internationalen Organisation”, in: Klaus Dingwerth/ Dieter Kerwer/ Andreas Nölke (eds), Die Organisierte Welt: Internationale Beziehungen und Organisationsforschung, Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Daase, Christopher (2009): “The ILC and Informalization”, in: Georg Nolte (ed.), Peace through International Law. The Role of the International Law Commission. A Colloquium at the Occasion of its Sixtieth Anniversary Heidelberg: Springer.
*Fehl, Caroline (2010): Living with a reluctant hegemon: Explaining European responses to US unilateralism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fehl, Caroline (2010): “Die ESVP aus konstruktivistischer Perspektive”, in: Matthias Dembinski/ Dirk Peters (eds.), Die europäische Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik im Licht konkurrierender Theorien, Baden-Baden: Nomos.