are to act for the sake of the system and to participate in the management of,
or interfere in the affairs of, lesser states. The likelihood that great powers will
try to manage the system is greatest when their number reduces to two.^24The question posed here for both Waltzian theory and international-society
writers alike is why this general tendency for the greatest to seek out special
responsibilities should seemingly cut out at two. Why should it not continue to
apply in the case of the sole great power, enjoying its unprecedented disparity with
the many others? These are questions that need to be answered, and not simply
evaded.
One answer for many is that hegemony is ab initioincompatible with international
society.^25 This seemingly rests upon the syllogism that hierarchy is a different
ordering principle from anarchy, hegemony is an expression of hierarchy, and
therefore hegemony cannot be a form of anarchy. Waltz had famously associated
hierarchy with domestic politics, and anarchy with the international. ‘The ordering
principles of the two structures are distinctly different’, he maintained, ‘indeed,
contrary to each other’.^26 It followed then that to ‘move from an anarchic to a
hierarchic realm is to move from one system to another’.^27
These categorical assertions have been regularly challenged,^28 and often presented
as a continuum rather than a dichotomy.^29 Some have recently challenged the
validity of anarchy as a general representation of all international politics, pointing
out that it has not been empirically tested, simply assumed.^30 Waltz, of course, had
clearly stressed that these ordering principles are ideal-types and, in practice, all
‘societies are mixed. Elements in them represent both of the ordering principles’.^31
There are very few ‘pure’ cases.^32 It is now rather accepted that the two principles
can indeed be so ‘mixed’, and that many political systems are effectively hybrids.
Accordingly, we have been encouraged to think instead of ‘hierarchy under
anarchy’^33 or ‘hierarchy inanarchy’,^34 while others urge us to explore the ‘social
logics of hierarchy that exist alongside, but cannot be explained by, the logic of
anarchy’.^35 It is precisely such a social logic of hierarchy that is potentially
illuminating with respect to hegemony. This requires us to think of hierarchy in its
consensual form, and as issuing from ‘relational authority’ that ‘rests on a bargain
between the ruler and the ruled premised on the former’s provision of a social order
of value sufficient to offset the latter’s loss of freedom’.^36 If this is once accepted, it
avoids any absolutist rejection of hierarchy as inconsistent with international society.
A focus upon legitimacy opens up the possibility of ‘genuine hierarchy’, and not
simply ‘inequality under anarchy’.^37
How does hegemony then relate to hierarchy, and, in turn, to anarchy? Some
have differentiated between formal and informal hierarchies, suggesting that formal
systems take us (too far) toward the pole of governance, while informal systems do
not. Hegemonies have, accordingly, been suggested as one type of informal
hierarchy.^38 Others consider hierarchy and hegemony as discrete forms of rule, but
with hegemony as a subset of hierarchy. However, since IR scholars have been so
wedded to anarchy, they have been reluctant to acknowledge hierarchy openly, and
How hierarchical can international society be? 275