Geopolitics, World Order and the Procedural Foundations of the International System

Dr. Mark Raymond Wick Cary Assistant Professor of International Security

Department of International and Area Studies University of Oklahoma

mraymond@ou.edu

DRAFT: Not for distribution or citation without permission of the author

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Toronto.

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Harvey Starr contends that “even in the world of growing interdependence and globalization,

geography, territory, and borders have important roles to play in the reality of, and study of

international relations” (2013, p. 439). These three factors encompass what has traditionally been

meant by geopolitics.1 International Relations (IR) debates concerning geopolitics have primarily focused

on the operation of the balance of power in the international system and key regional subsystems, and

on questions about the existence and durability of hegemony in the international system. This literature

is characterized by both systemic-level theorizing and by clear attempts on the part of IR scholars to be

policy-relevant. It is, at present, primarily concerned with forecasting the future trajectory of system

polarity in an era of potential geopolitical transition and devising foreign policy appropriate to managing

the problems such a transition would pose. From the perspective of the advanced industrial

democracies, the central challenge is confronting the emergence of the so-called BRICS.2 This debate has

largely been framed in terms of a grand strategic choice between what Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth

have called retrenchment and “deep engagement” (2012/13). This is because the simultaneous

emergence of several new, non-Western great powers is taken to have highly important consequences

for world politics, potentially affecting the nature of international institutions, the global distribution of

resources, and perhaps also patterns of war and peace – especially if these rising powers are able to act

in concert. That is, the rise of the BRICS is perceived as a potential geopolitical transition with

implications for world order.

The primary argument of this paper is that treating the emergence of the BRICS as a problem of

preventing or managing a geopolitical transition fundamentally misspecifies the policy problem. Instead,

the problem is one of rule-making and rule interpretation. Hegemonic wars are important because they

1 On the intellectual history of geopolitics and its intersection with International Relations (IR) theory, see Ashworth (2011; 2013). 2 The term BRICs was originally coined by Goldman Sachs executive Jim O’Neill (2001). It incorporated Brazil, Russia, India and China; the foreign ministers of these states met first as a grouping in 2006, and the first summit-level meeting was held in 2009. South Africa joined in 2010.

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have been a common tool for resolving intractable differences between great powers over the nature of

world order; however, the Anglo-American transition provides a vital existence proof that establishes

the possibility of resolving world order issues in a peaceful manner, and that demonstrates the danger

of conflating the underlying problem of world order with one common way of resolving that problem.

This conflation is dangerous because it encourages the allocation of resources (including discursive

resources) to militarized foreign policies that are likely to undermine trust3 and exacerbate already

substantial difficulties in rule-making and interpretation.

The paper proceeds in three parts. First, it provides a brief overview of recent literature on

grand strategy in general and on the BRICS in particular. In doing so, it makes the case that this literature

improperly conflates the problem of resolving world order disputes with the problem of managing

power transitions. Second, the paper frames the problem of world order (and thus the rise of the BRICS)

as a problem of rule-making and briefly outlines resulting foreign policy implications. Third, it identifies

the importance of rule-making on world order in the context of geopolitical transitions and suggests

avenues for further comparative historical research in this vein.

Grand Strategy, the Rise of the BRICS, and the Problem of World Order

In large part, the current debate about the state and future trajectory of system polarity and its

implications for grand strategy is simply an extension of a process of casting about for new models that

began shortly after the end of the Cold War (see, for example, Mearsheimer 1990; Huntington 1993). In

the North American discipline, this debate has consistently been framed in terms of: (1) social science

questions about whether the system is unipolar or multipolar in nature and, to the extent it is unipolar,

whether this condition is sustainable; and (2) foreign policy or grand strategy questions about how

(typically) the United States should respond in order to protect its interests. The camps in this debate

3 On trust in international relations, see Andrew Kydd, “Trust, Reassurance, and Cooperation,” International Organization 54.2 (2000): 325-357; and Aaron M. Hoffman, “A Conceptualization of Trust in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 8.3 (2002): 375-401.

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have been described variously as pessimists and optimists (Schweller 2011), balance of power realists

and unipolar stability theorists (Layne 2012), and as advocates either of retrenchment or ‘deep

engagement’ (Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth 2012/13). The debate has been animated in the last

several years by discussion of the BRICS as rising powers, especially in context of renewed concern

about relative American decline after the 2008 financial crisis.4 Each camp has generally interpreted

these events as confirming its prior position; indeed, I am aware of no instance in which a scholar has

migrated from one camp to the other.

The critical point for my argument in this paper, however, is not whether one camp is right and

the other is wrong about the trajectory of system polarity or the appropriate policy response. Rather, I

am interested instead in how the ‘problem’ posed by the BRICS is constructed. Extant work treats the

potential rise of the BRICS primarily as a matter of managing geopolitical transition either by staving off

relative decline (Mearsheimer 2010), managing relative decline by leveraging institutions that

disproportionately benefit the declining hegemon (Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth 2012/13), or by

accepting decline and retrenching in terms of both goals and commitments (MacDonald and Parent

2011; Schweller 2011; Layne 2012).

Each of these responses treats the problem essentially in balancing terms, understood largely as

a matter of maintaining either a clear advantage or at least rough parity in terms of key indicators of

national power. Mearsheimer writes, for example, that “the ideal situation for any great power is to be

the hegemon in the system” (2010, p. 387) and that “no state in its right mind should want other

powerful states located in its region” (2010, p. 390). Layne, meanwhile, argues that the 2008 financial

crisis “highlighted the shift of global wealth – and power – from West to East” and “raised doubts about

the robustness of the economic and financial underpinnings of the United States’ primacy” (2012, p.

4 For analysis accepting the BRICS as rising powers thesis, see: Hart and Jones (2010); Larson and Shevchenko (2010); MacDonald and Parent (2011); Schweller (2011); and Layne (2012). For more sceptical views either on the BRICS as a whole or China in particular, see: Beckley (2011); Nye (2012); Sharma (2012); Wohlforth (2012); Brütsch and Papa (2013); and Johnston (2013).

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203). Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth assess the case for retrenchment and find in favour of a strategy

of “deep engagement” that entails maintaining global security commitments via overseas military

presence and seeking “to lead the liberal institutional order” (2012/13, p. 15). They base this conclusion

on an attempt to estimate the net benefit of this strategy in economic terms and the relative benefit

compared with a strategy of retrenchment (2012/13, p. 18-23). In contrast to the straightforwardly

materialist approach taken by Mearsheimer and Layne, however, Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth

introduce arguments about institutions. In particular, they argue that the United States is relatively

better able to “use international institutions and undertake coordinated actions to constrain other

powers.” This relative advantage over rising powers is a historically contingent effect of the fact that

“the institutions, norms, rules, and standards of legitimacy that it uses to constrain others are largely of

its own creation” (2012/13, p. 23). Despite the introduction of institutions into the cost-benefit analysis,

the fundamental character of the argument remains unchanged. Institutions are treated as given and

fixed, and assessed in terms of their instrumental utility in safeguarding American interests in the

maintenance of the post-1945 order.

Framing the foreign policy problem posed by emerging powers in terms of balancing and system

polarity is sensible if there is a strong connection between primacy in the systemic distribution of

material power and the ability to efficiently achieve changes in the institutions that constitute world

order. If there is such a connection, the stakes in the primacy game are extremely large; losing primacy

will quickly lead to a less advantageous world order that provides disproportionate returns to the new

hegemon.

This sort of view is present across the camps in the existing debate. For example, Layne asserts

that “there is a critical linkage between a great power’s military and economic standing, on the one

hand and its prestige and soft power on the other”; he concludes that “if they perceive that the United

States is declining, the incentive for China and other emerging powers is to wait a decade or two and

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reshape the international system themselves in a way that reflects their own interests, norms, and

values” (2012, p. 211). This conclusion only follows if there is a relatively unproblematic mechanism

allowing the translation of power resources into world order outcomes. Indeed, Layne provides a more

general and categorical statement of his position on the relationship between material power resources

and world order: “Great power politics is about power. Rules and institutions do not exist in vacuum.

Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In international politics, who

rules makes the rules” (2012, p. 211). Layne’s position echoes Mearsheimer’s clear statement on the

epiphenomenality of institutions in world politics (1994/95).

Randall Schweller connects the problem of world order to the problems of hegemonic transition

and great power war in even more stark terms. He argues that “international order – particularly one

that is legitimate, efficient, and dynamic – requires periodic global wars [emphasis added], roughly every

100 years or so. Otherwise, inertia and decay set in” (2011, p. 286). On this view, not only is world order

an outcome of the distribution of material power, that order can only be altered by means of great

power wars that demonstrate (and cement understandings of) the prevailing distribution. This is an even

stronger position than the Layne/Mearsheimer contention that material primacy can be translated into

a great power’s preferred world order.

Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth are more open to the possibility (articulated in Keohane 1984)

that institutional orders can be ‘sticky’, and that material power cannot be unproblematically translated

into world order outcomes; indeed, this is central to their argument that the United States should opt

against a strategy of retrenchment. However, they still posit a connection between material primacy and

the content of world order: “the United States’ role as security provider also has a more direct effect of

enhancing its authority and capacity to initiate institutional cooperation in various policy areas”

(2012/13, p. 50). This claim draws on Ikenberry’s (2001) punctuated equilibrium argument associating

world order change with the settlements of hegemonic wars and positing a grand bargain in the post-

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1945 order whereby the United States passed up higher short-term returns from primacy in order to

create a more legitimate and lasting order that still provided considerable returns.

The problem, of course, is that the connection between material primacy and world order is

more complicated than this. Indeed, there remains debate over whether primacy even confers net

material benefits.5 Even if primacy pays, there are four major problems with the claim that material

primacy can be translated into world order outcomes. First, there is the general problem of translating

power resources into outcomes (Baldwin 1979; Keohane and Nye 2001 [1977]). Differences between

actors in terms of skill and/or commitment can lead to outcomes other than would be predicted simply

by examining resource endowments. Second, there is the need to explain time lags in the translation of

primacy into world order (Keohane 1984). Third, it is necessary to explain why a hegemon chooses6 a

particular order, from among all orders it might consider. For example, John Ruggie has shown that

American values shaped the post-1945 order in a substantive fashion (1982) and that multilateralism

has a ‘thick’ or normative component (1992), and Christian Reus-Smit has established a link between

values and the fundamental institutions of a given international system that explains variation between

anarchies (1999). Fourth, there is a need for additional understanding about the mechanism and causal

pathways by which actors (whether or not they enjoy material primacy) attempt to translate their

preferences into world orders, and the conditions under which other states (and increasingly also non-

state actors) accept such attempts. This is critical to determining whether it is primacy itself doing the

explanatory work or whether there are other important factors. Understanding of causal mechanisms is

also important to explaining the form and timing of change in world order.

5 For the argument in favour of this proposition, see Norrlof (2010). For a conditional argument, see Drezner (2013). 6 Whether the complex sets of rules, norms and institutions that make up a world order can be meaningfully said to be chosen is also an important question. On this, see March and Olsen (1998); and Wendt (2001).

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World Order, Rule-Making, and the Rise of the BRICS

If the determinants of world order are more varied than relative material power resources, then

it is at best insufficient (and at worst misleading) to frame the foreign policy problem posed by rising

powers in terms of balancing and managing or preventing hegemonic transition. Even if material power

resources matter, and in many cases they surely do, the question of the mechanisms and processes by

which they are translated into world order outcomes remains. To the extent that other factors matter, a

focus on relative material power may lead to sub-optimal outcomes for advanced industrial democracies

seeking to navigate a changing international system – exactly the constituency the IR scholars involved

in these debates are seeking to advise. Such an approach might lead, for example, to overemphasis on

military spending relative to foreign aid or, especially, diplomacy. In turn, militarization of foreign policy

pertaining to the emergence of the BRICS may create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the BRICS

respond in kind.7

What, then, is the appropriate frame for the social scientific study of, and for responsible foreign

policy responses to, the rise of the BRICS? I argue that the problem is more productively recast as one of

rule-making and interpretation. Assessments of the BRICS typically point out the diverse resource

endowments, future growth prospects, cultures and other characteristics of this group (Brütsch and

Papa 2013; Schirm 2010; Schweller 2011; Sharma 2012) while identifying their common desire for

increased status, influence and leadership roles in world politics (Cooper and Farooq 2013; Hart and

Jones 2010; Hurrell 2006; Larson and Shevchenko 2010; Schirm 2010). Achieving these goals will require

alterations to a variety of international rules, norms and institutions. This is true because status and

other social goods are, like material goods, distributed according to shared understandings about the

appropriate allocation criteria.

7 Such dynamics have been central to IR theory; see, for example, Jervis (1978) and Wendt (1992).

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The activity of the BRICS grouping thus far indicates that these emerging powers understand the

nature of the game they are playing in a similar manner. The first meeting of the BRIC countries took

place at the foreign minister level at the 2006 United Nations General Assembly; Russia hosted the first

summit level meeting in 2009. In addition to annual leaders’ meetings, there have been ministerial

meetings in the areas of finance, trade, agriculture and health; there have also been lower level

meetings of officials dealing with science and technology, national security, competition and statistics.8

While BRICS countries have, at times, struggled to cooperate (Brütsch and Papa 2013) or to mobilize the

broader international community in support of their proposals (Schirm 2010), these are questions of

effectiveness. My argument in this paper has instead to do with matters of form or procedure. In order

to accurately frame the policy problem posed by the rise of the BRICS, it is necessary to understand the

group’s activity on its own terms. On this view, the BRICS grouping is clearly intended as an alternative

or counterweight to the G8, which has functioned primarily as a great power directorate that shapes

global governance (Kirton and Takase 2002).

This selection of activities is not random. Rather, it reflects goal-oriented action conditioned by

shared understandings of the ways states (or at least a subset of states with particular resources) can

acquire increased status and influence in the international system. It also suggests that the BRICS have

concluded that their proposals for change in the rules and institutions of the international system are

more likely to succeed if they pursue them according to accepted procedural rules for making and

interpreting the rules of the game in world politics. Schirm concludes that emerging powers will

generate support for international leadership bids when they include “the interests and/or ideas

dominant in another country” (2010, p. 199) in their proposals and that such states “can reach their

aims and lead others only if they credibly perform as multilateralists” (2010, p. 216). David A. Lake

makes a similar argument about the United States. He defends American authority in world politics by

8 “About the BRICS,” BRICS Information Centre, University of Toronto. Available at http://www.brics.utoronto.ca/about.html. Accessed on 10 March 2014.

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asserting that it “provides security both internally and externally and permits unprecedented

prosperity.” He argues that “the key foreign policy task today is not to diminish US authority but to

preserve its benefits into the future.” Doing so “requires a new, more restraining, multilateral solution

that binds the hands of the United States far more tightly than in the past” (2010, p. 471). Multilateral

procedures are thus connected tightly to legitimacy, authority and the maintenance of the post-1945

order. Both Schirm and Lake’s arguments suggest a deeper question: why does successful international

leadership or successful international rule-making require multilateralism? The answer is that

multilateralism is a broadly accepted international practice9 for rule-making (Ruggie 1992; Reus-Smit

1999). Since such procedural rules vary across time and social context, this requirement for successful

rule-making is historically and contexually contingent.

While important, multilateralism is not the only such rule-making practice in contemporary

world politics. The international system also contains a tradition of great power leadership (Bull 2002

[1977]). Cooper and Farooq conclude that “mastering the club-like diplomacy through the formation of

BRICS, the members have found a mode of institutionalism that can help reinforce their agenda in the

global forums but only when they can avoid frictions on mutually contesting issues” (2013, p. 428).Their

demonstration of the importance of club diplomacy by demographically and/or economically important

states supplements Schirm’s identification of multilateralism as relevant procedural forms for rule-

making and interpretation in the contemporary international system.

These practices of great power summitry and multilateralism, among others, constitute the

procedural foundations of rule-making in the international system.10 My central analytic claim is thus

that the BRICS are not engaged in balancing or in a bid for hegemony; rather, they are engaged in a

process of rule-making. The crucial question in studying processes of making and interpreting rules has

to do with the conditions under which particular attempts succeed or fail. When do audiences accept

9 Here, I mean a practice in the sense of a socially competent performance. See Adler and Pouliot (2011). 10 See also Raymond (2013).

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proposed rule changes and interpretations? While constructivists have identified numerous mechanisms

for the spread, acceptance or internalization of norms and rules,11 the literature remains

underdeveloped in important ways. First, the comparability of these different conceptions of how

intersubjective knowledge is created or altered is not clear; can norm localization be compared with

argumentation or persuasion? If the constructivist research program is to realize its full potential, as

much comparability as possible would be desirable, and yet there has been little systematic thought

devoted to this question. Second, the scope conditions under which actors employ these various

mechanisms are not well understood. When do actors choose to socialize? When do they persuade?

When do they engage in strategic social construction? And how do they know which is the most

appropriate or effective tool for the job? Third, and most important, how do actors know how to do

these things in particular contexts? What counts as persuasive in one context might not do so in

another.

The notion of a social practice of rule-making and interpretation, structured by historically and

contextually contingent procedural rules, helps to answer these questions. Actors know how to convince

audiences because (and to the extent that) they have knowledge of the procedural rules accepted by

those audiences as legitimate. Note that such social competence is variable in at least two senses. Some

actors are socially competent in some settings but not others, and in a given situation it is likely (but not

necessary) that some actors will be more competent than others. Note also that there is no guarantee

that all actors in a given encounter will accept the same social practices for making and interpreting

rules; I will return to this point below. The primary expectation of this argument about the existence of a

social practice of rule-making in the international system is that attempts to change rules or propose

novel interpretations are more likely to succeed if they are presented in a manner consistent with

11 These include, but are not limited to: strategic social construction (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), argument/persuasion (Payne 2001; Crawford 2002; Müller 2004), socialization (Johnston 2001), norm diffusion (Park 2006), cognitive evolution (Adler 2005), learning (Checkel 2001), norm localization (Acharya 2004) and norm subsidiarity (Acharya 2011).

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procedural rules accepted by the relevant audience. The argument also expects that audiences will

evaluate such proposals according to these rules. Where proposals or evaluations are performed in a

procedurally illegitimate manner, other parties should be expected to articulate procedural criticisms

and the party in question should be expected to justify or deny the procedurally illegitimate move.

Finally, the absence of shared rules for legitimate practices of rule-making and interpretation should

significantly complicate social interaction.

What does this interpretation of the BRICS’ activity mean for the nature of the foreign policy

problem(s) posed by their emergence as great powers? First, it suggests the possibility of the relocation

of global governance functions to institutions less hospitable to the advanced industrial democracies.

One such example is the proposal for a BRICS development bank (Brütsch and Papa 2013). While it is

unlikely that such an organization would immediately displace the World Bank, over time it may provide

an alternate source of financing to states that are ineligible for World Bank lending due to their human

rights records or that prefer for policy reasons to avoid relationships with what might be seen as a

Western-oriented organization. Another potential example is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

(SCO). The SCO has a thicker mandate than the BRICS, including a security mandate to address the

“three evils” (terrorism, extremism and separatism) (Aris 2009). The SCO also embodies decidedly less

liberal values than traditional international organizations (Ambrosio 2008). While it is inaccurate to

equate the BRICS and the SCO, China and Russia play leading roles in the SCO while India holds observer

status. Crucially, while the provisions of the SCO Charter resemble in many ways the constitutive

provisions of the main international organizations of the post-1945 order, it places greater emphasis on

non-interference and relatively absolute understandings of sovereignty.12 Article 15 officially establishes

the SCO as an entity in international law, endowing it with legal personality similar to other international

12 Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Available at http://www.scosummit2013.org/en/documents/hartiya-shanhayskoy-organizatsii-sotrudnichestva/. Accessed 10 March 2014.

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organizations. Article 16 establishes the decision-making rules of the body, which operates by consensus

but allows partial cooperation between consenting states in the event that consensus cannot be

reached. Articles 17-26 contain similarly routine procedural provisions.

Overall, the SCO Charter makes clear that its member states possess a thorough understanding

of multilateralism from a mechanistic perspective, but there is at minimum a tension between the SCO’s

prioritization of order and regime stability at the domestic level and Ruggie’s more substantive

conception of multilateralism (1992). Maintaining this separation requires a sharp distinction between

the rights of states on the one hand and the rights of citizens vis-a-vis their states on the other. Such an

understanding is consistent with classical conceptions of sovereignty, as well as with prevailing

understandings in much of the Third World (Jackson 1990; Acharya 2011). In contrast, the advanced

industrial democracies have increasingly accepted qualified notions of sovereignty providing for a

‘Responsibility to Protect’ and allowing more latitude for civil society participation in making and

interpreting the rules of world politics. While these distinctive values have substantive implications for

an array of issues including human rights and the possibility of humanitarian intervention, they also have

procedural implications. To the extent that the involvement of civil society organizations and actors

provides a force multiplier for the advanced industrial democracies in international rule-making,13 a

return to a more classical conception of legitimate rule-making capacity in the international system

would relatively empower the emerging powers and Third World states.

Second, if the BRICS are engaged in social practices of rule-making and rule interpretation, it

suggests the possibility that they may attempt to change rules and institutions in the international

system such that resources are distributed differently. The likelihood is that such a distribution would

come primarily at the expense of the advanced industrial democracies. While the efforts of BRICS states

to cooperate to such ends in trade (Schirm 2010) and climate (Brütsch and Papa 2013) negotiations

13 For such an argument see Brake and Katzenstein (2013).

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suggest caution in expecting such outcomes, at least in the near term, the possibility should not be

overlooked. In this respect, the argument I make here is admittedly similar to the existing IR literature

that treats the rise of the BRICS as posing a problem of hegemonic transition.

The critical difference, and one of the contributions of this paper, is in providing a theoretically

grounded basis on which to explain the observed processes of institutional innovation and contestation.

Accounts derived from geopolitics and realist IR theory should expect the BRICS to succeed in altering

the prevailing distribution of resources entailed by international institutions after they surpass either

the United States individually or the advanced industrial democracies collectively in terms of material

power resources. These theories should additionally expect a heightened probability of war, or at least

intensified balancing,14 as the system shifts from unipolarity to multipolarity. On the basis of such

theories, it seems likely that rational states would simply focus their efforts on internal balancing where

possible, supplemented by alliances of convenience where necessary. In contrast, the argument I have

presented here expects the BRICS to succeed in altering the prevailing distribution of resources

produced by international institutions if they present arguments for such outcomes in a manner

consistent with relevant international practices of rule-making and rule interpretation. The empirical

record evinces substantial efforts at leadership and rule-making on the part of the BRICS. Indeed, the

creation of the BRICS grouping is reasonable only if processes of rule-making undertaken in great power

summitry have causal significance for world order outcomes independent of the distribution of material

resources.

Framing the foreign policy problem posed by the rise of the BRICS entails a degree of forecasting

about future scenarios.15 The foreign policy implications outlined above presume that, while the BRICS

may transfer global governance functions to newly-created institutions or organizations, or alter the

rules of existing ones in ways that benefit them at the expense of the advanced industrial democracies,

14 On the general absence of such balancing, see Wohlforth et al. (2007). 15 On the use of scenario-based forecasting in social science, see Bernstein et al. (2000).

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the system of global governance that characterizes contemporary world politics will essentially continue

to operate. Such an outcome, however, is not inevitable.

Each of the BRICS has a degree of familiarity with the procedural rules of the contemporary

international system. Brazil, India and South Africa are former colonies with elites that have received

Western-style educations. China’s engagement with the European international society has been

documented (Suzuki 2009), and Russia also has a long if peripheral experience with that system.

However, each of the five has had extremely negative experiences with the international system, as well

as a pre-Westphalian culture of rule-making and interpretation. To the extent that increasing status and

resources create confidence and assertiveness in elites (Larson and Shevchenko 2010; Johnston 2001),

or to the extent that domestic political pressures create a desire to locate an external scapegoat, it is

conceivable that the BRICS might (either individually or collectively) increasingly reject rule-making

practices in contemporary world politics. Another pathway to such an outcome might take the form of

increasing democratization (or societal leveling) in BRICS states, whereby political participation by non-

elites less familiar with Western rule-making practices creates domestic political pressure on elected

leaders and/or the composition of elites increasingly reflects these non-Western expectations about

procedures for legitimate rule-making. Any of these scenarios would not only complicate the process of

creating new rules and institutions; they would also create severe problems for interpreting existing

rules to meet new circumstances. To the extent that the legitimacy of existing rules depends on the

shared belief that they were created in a procedurally just manner,16 breakdown in the procedural

foundations of the international system may also have a corrosive effect on the operation of currently

non-controversial areas of global governance.

16 The role of the ‘justice motive’ has been relatively neglected in IR theory (Welch 1993; 2014). See also: Reus-Smit (1999); Albin (2001); Lebow (2008).

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World Order and Rule-Making in Eras of Geopolitical Transition

The fundamental problem posed by the rise of the BRICS is the potential that one or more of

these emerging great powers may contest the post-1945 world order in part or in its entirety. Such

challenges are likely to take the form of attempts to change or reinterpret existing rules and to create

new ones. Rule-making and interpretation are distinctive social activities that are not reducible to bids

for material primacy or for either global or regional hegemony. Accordingly, much of the current debate

over grand strategy and the rise of the BRICS misses the mark in ways that risk distorting the lessons

scholars offer and that policymakers seem all too tempted to draw.17

One way to improve this discussion is to focus analysis and research on the particular dynamics

of rule-making in the international system during eras of (at least potential) geopolitical transition. Such

a focus is sensible because material resources surely matter in world politics, even if their impact is

shaped by social interpretation of their meaning. It is also sensible because international rule-making

has long accorded rights and responsibilities to great powers – even if the nature of that role has

evolved considerably over time.18 The Westphalian system offers numerous cases of potential

geopolitical transition that could be examined through the lens of rule-making and interpretation;

virtually all have been studied by historians and political scientists, though typically without the specific

goal of examining the dynamics of rule-making as a class of phenomena. Some examples include the

immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War, the revision of international financial governance in

the wake of the end of Bretton Woods, the creation of the post-1945 and post-1918 orders, as well as

attempts to settle questions of world order after the Napoleonic Wars and the Peace of Westphalia.19

17 Witness, for example, United States Senator John McCain’s New York Times op-ed on Russia’s actions in Ukraine. John McCain, “Obama Has Made America Look Weak,” New York Times, 14 March 2014. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/mccain-a-return-to-us-realism.html?emc=edit_th_20140315&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=46003993&_r=1. Accessed on 15 March 2014. 18 There is a growing literature on hierarchy in the international system. See, among others: Simpson (2004), Lake (2011), Hobson and Sharman (2005), Sharman (2013), Keene (2007), Butt (2013). 19 Many of these cases are covered in Holsti (1991) and/or Ikenberry (2001).

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The analytical leverage of such work would also be increased if it is able to examine ancient and non-

Western cases, since there are severe problems associated with attempts to generalize from a single

case.20

Among the most pressing questions in such a program of inquiry is whether there are ways to

maintain and increase the legitimacy, or even to create, a common stock of procedural rules and social

practices of rule-making and interpretation among a set of culturally diverse actors. Clear, concrete

answers to this question could substantially enrich scholarly understanding of change in the

international system and in world order; they could also be of clear benefit to contemporary grand

strategy debates in the BRICS as well as in the advanced industrial democracies.

20 Scholars in the English School were pioneers at attempts to study ancient and non-Western systems; see, for example, work by Adda Bozeman and Adam Watson. However, they did not explicitly focus on procedural rules as a category of analysis. More recent work in the English School and among constructivists has begun to build on the important achievements of these early scholars.

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