Informal imposed hierarchies in world politics and internal instabilities in subordinate states: the Afghanistan and Iraq cases

Abstract

In international relations, hierarchy is generally understood as the relational contract by which two states legitimately acknowledge their superior and subordinate ranks. Empirical studies, however, show that some states experience distinctive hierarchical patterns, such as military intervention and nation-building. This study calls them the ‘informal imposed hierarchy’ (IIH after this) because they all install favoured leaders, governmental structures and/or troops in target states without the consent of the target states’ population. Using state clusters from 1945 to 2003, we found that four sorts of states experienced IIHs: those having counter-hegemonic actors, signalling a move to the rival hierarchy, seeking an exit door from the current hierarchical system, and perceived to present new security risks (e.g. terrorism). IIH likely generates instability since it installs and protects illegitimate rulers in the target state. It can aggravate internal war in subordinate states with single-party governments or heterogeneous communities. In order to assess the model’s and the arguments’ explanatory power, the study selects the relevant universe cases. The next, it examines pre- and post-Soviet eras in Afghanistan and the 2001 and 2003 US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as control cases. These cross-cases illustrate the change of IIH’s motives over time and across hierarchies.

Keywords:

• Informal imposed hierarchy model
• subordinate states
• Afghanistan
• Iraq
• civil war

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ali Balcı and the Editorial and Editing Boards of the Third World Quarterly Journal for their insightful remarks on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 While hierarchies are not a novel phenomenon in world politics (Organski 1958, 326, 330; Vital 1967), recent developments in the international system (Iraq war) have drawn more researchers’ interest in the hierarchy.

2 States intervene in the internal affairs of other sovereign states to impose a favorable leader or democracy, communism, or autocracy, either overtly through military interventions or ­covertly through assistance to irritated domestic actors (Downes 2009, 2–3).

3 Taş Yetim and Hazar (2022) offer some hypotheses on why and how the hieararch punishes their subordinate partners.

4 The hierarch also protects the leader’s tenure by supplying coercive capacity. Coercive threat necessitates an active and constantly deployed military, as well as the capacity to constantly police political decisions within governments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hüsna Taş Yetim

Hüsna Taş Yetim is a guest lecturer at Eskişehir Osmangazi University in Turkey, teaching international law, conflict analysis and resolution and media and foreign policy. Her research interests include international hierarchy, alliance theories, international politics and the foreign policies of the United States, Russia, China and Turkey. The author’s works on these topics have been published in a variety of international and national periodicals.