Although the study of hierarchy in international relations has not supplanted the broader IR focus on anarchy, the field has grown significantly over the last decade, both in the scope of types of political relations that scholars have explored (empires, informal empires, military occupations, alliance systems) and the theoretical approaches used to show how hierarchies are organized, constituted, and maintained. Jesse Dillon Savage’s entry into this literature is original and impactful, extending the logic of political survivorship models to offer a theory of how domestic politics and political economy arrangements in the subordinate state help lock in hierarchical political forms and transform the institutions of the subordinate polity. Reviving what used to be referred to as “pericentric” approaches to empire, but with greater conceptual precision and methodological sophistication, the book’s main insight is that leaders of “weaker” polities can personally profit from hierarchical arrangements like informal empire, nonrecognition, and client-state status.

Savage’s book fills an important gap in existing rationalist approaches to hierarchy—especially those based on relational contracting—by examining specifically how and why local actors and elites of subordinate polities acquiesce to or even invite external intervention and support. Importantly, he challenges theoretical assumptions that assess the overall benefits of subordination that might accrue to the weaker polity—for example, spending less on national defense—and zeroes in on the opportunities for elite rent-seeking enabled by non-sovereign or semi-sovereign status. In situations where levels of elite rent-seeking and political contestation are high, elites willfully surrender sovereignty for personal economic and political gain, with informal empire their preferred mode of political organization. Further, the two interact, given that “in an environment where political power is tied to rent-seeking, loss of political power means loss of economic return” (p. 14). In turn, rent-seeking under hierarchy alters elite–society relations: it encourages patrimonial politics, as autocrats distribute key local government positions to loyalists and create arrangements to protect high-yielding assets. Savage also explores the implications of this account of domestic politics for resisting or bargaining with a dominant power, considering both situations when territorial expansion is cheap and when it is costly for the dominant power.

The bulk of the book’s empirical material examines Russia’s relations with its former satellites in the post-Soviet space and the internal developments within these states. Savage rightly argues that Russia’s interest in controlling and influencing its neighbors, considered alone, insufficiently explains varying hierarchical patterns of institutional influence and elite capture. The book’s core chapters examine the evolution of political hierarchy and elite support in conflict-ridden Georgia and Ukraine, demonstrating how elites in sections of both countries (both within and outside separatist territories) have welcomed Russian support for profit and local power. In a well-crafted chapter 3, he looks at elite and societal attitudes toward Russian intervention in four subnational units within the territory of Georgia: the breakaway territory of Abkhazia, the autonomous region of Adjara, and, fascinatingly, in the ethnic-minority territories of Javakheti (Armenian dominated) and Kvemo Kartli (Azeri dominated). Using survey data from Georgia and Ukraine, chapter 4 tests the claim that mass attitudes toward compromising sovereignty are shaped by prevailing perceptions of elite-level corruption.  Chapter 5 extends these arguments to historical case studies to explain the relative durability of European informal empire in China, supported by economic interests at regional and canton levels, and the Ottoman Empire with its decentralized system of rule and promotion of a regional commercial elite; these are contrasted with the breakdown of informal empire in Egypt and the imposition of formal colonial rule by the British. Chapter 6 conducts broader tests, both of the local determinants of Russia’s regional relations with all of the former Soviet states (measured by the propensity of these states to join Russian-controlled regional organizations) and of the effects of rent-seeking and political competition on the levels of reductions of political autonomy across 155 countries from 1950 to 2011.

The great strength of Savage’s book is demonstrating the distinct nature of domestic political arrangements and economies that are forged and entrenched in juridically semi-sovereign and non-sovereign relations. Policy makers and observers frequently note that non-sovereign polities embed themselves within shadow economies, such as smuggling networks, often with the support of an external political patron. The book squeezes a lot of analytical mileage out of the Georgia and Ukraine cases, showing how rent-seeking elites, such as the leader of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, Aslan Abashidze, and President Viktor Yanukovych, generated rent-extraction machines; it also reveals how these arrangements were insufficient to shield them from greater societal demands for reform when these benefits were not widely disbursed: “external patrons can provide some support but rarely enough to counteract the loss or complete erosion of a domestic power base” (p. 149). Post-Soviet scholars who have drawn links between authoritarianism, corruption, and shifting geopolitical influences will appreciate these conceptual and empirical connections, and the discussion of changing domestic dynamics of Russian patronage in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan is especially timely.

Still, some of the measures used in the empirical tests do not always capture the nuance of Savage’s own arguments. For example, using national-level indicators of corruption may not reliably map the types of nested and localized rent-seeking relations and patrimonial structures suggested by the theoretical model. Savage’s basic insight that more corrupt regimes are more susceptible to hierarchical capture is compelling, but the rent-seeking of post-Soviet regimes is often compartmentalized within certain sectors, with different international patrons embedded in transnational networks. For example, although Turkmenistan may have left the Russian orbit in some areas, its gas export dependence has now made it an economic client of China. The regime of Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev simultaneously built a strong one-party state, deferred to most Russian demands for regional integration in the economic and security realms, and was implicated in a host of high-profile grand corruptions scandals involving Western and Chinese energy investments. And although the book admirably discusses some potential applications to the United States, one hopes that future researchers might explore how the wide range of US tools of intervention—covert operations, base-related payments and security assistance, foreign aid, and weapons sales—fed and shaped the rent-seeking behaviors of Cold War clients while opening new opportunities for political competition and democratization.

Political Survival and Sovereignty in International Relations confirms that hierarchies in IR often have specific benefactors and unleash transformative political dynamics and struggles that merit more careful study. Researchers from outside the post-Soviet IR community who engage with Savage’s theory and applications should be rewarded with fresh insights and new leads.