Even as the future of the U.S.-led international order seems increasingly uncertain, Vincent Pouliot’s book is a vibrant, thought-provoking, and compelling account of the everyday organizational practices and diplomatic routines that help shape the dynamics and procedures of international organizations and contemporary multilateralism.
Pouliot’s account examines the dynamics of “multilateral diplomacy,” which encompasses “complex multilateralism” or global governance networks comprised of heterodox actors (UN Global Compact), international summitry (annual Group of 8 or Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings), and permanent representatives who are assigned by member states to intergovernmental bodies such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The author focuses on permanent representations that represent a growing trend in multilateralization (e.g., the establishment of the European Union’s External Action service) and are critical to “understand diplomacy’s constitutive power in producing world politics” (p. 34).
That the daily travails of relatively unknown international diplomats who reside and work in Geneva, New York, and Brussels should be regarded as so consequential is the opening, and perhaps most significant, claim in what emerges as a treasure trove of insights into how seemingly mundane diplomatic routines, practices, and insider codes help to constitute and transform international relations. To make this case, Pouliot relies on the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu and sociological approaches that explore the network structure of social relations.
The book continually weaves theoretical nuances into lively insights drawn from NATO and the UN. Sections are structured around the way that global governance has become more multilateral and how the scope of communities is recognized (“Situations”); how diplomats master the rules of the local game (“Dispositions”); how the setting of a permanent institution generates particular types of social practices (“Relations”); and how states position themselves within these settings and organizational activities (“Positions”). A thoughtful chapter on field logics employs multiple correspondence analysis to uncover the main principles that structure states’ relative positions or pecking orders within their respective multilateral settings.
International Pecking Orders is saturated with fascinating insights and analytical nuances gleaned from years of skilled field research, but at least three theoretical contributions are noteworthy: First, Pouliot explores the limits of standard rationalist approaches to analyzing multilateral settings. Whereas institutional design theories emphasize such instrumental acts as delegation, contracting, and the design of formal committee structures and voting procedures, the author’s account places great weight on how practitioners themselves demonstrate agency and flexibility as they balance navigating their obligations to their home country with conforming to the procedures and local codes of their multilateral communities. Such interactions of connectivity and reciprocity among relatively tight-knit clusters of multilateral cliques are poorly explained by rationalist bargaining logics.
Second, Pouliot convincingly exposes how contemporary multilateral institutions are steeped in dynamics of power politics, even as they publicly tout the importance of principles like sovereign equality, consensus, and diplomatic competence. At the same time, vaunted currencies of status and membership contribution (such as NATO’s defense-spending guidelines) in practice seem to apply more to the lower-strata members of the institution. A key takeaway is that diplomats, as political agents, not only have to understand the rules of their environment but also must “know how to use those rules” (p. 58). Competence that is masked as technical or organizational expertise is actually a power resource, while incompetence diminishes social standing and organizational influence. Adhering to local codes by demonstrating self-restraint and solidarity may be as important as staking strong positions, while deviations from such collective bargaining undermines an organization’s overall influence. Taking the example of the now-infamous 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, where major allies were publicly split over the alliance’s offering of a Membership Action Program to Ukraine and Georgia, the most damaging effect of the summit was not the actual disagreement over expanding the alliance but the ways in which an impromptu compromise public statement revealed that the organization had strayed from its own norms and usually meticulous planning procedures.
Third, the book ambitiously positions itself as a foil to David Lake’s important work on hierarchy in international relations. In particular, Pouliot’s account decouples authority from hierarchy and emphasizes how in a socially organized system of vertical differentiation, the smaller or weaker states at the bottom of the pecking order actively reproduce inequality or “end up partaking in their own domination” (p. 24).
The author’s important claims about the bottom-up routines that constitute international hierarchy may be less salient when applied beyond these long-established multilateral settings. The necessary flip side of a theoretical framework that emphasizes everyday practices, routines, and reproduction is that it is less useful for predicting patterns of organizational change. For Pouliot, international hierarchy is deeper than we typically expect, precisely because agents have enduring investments in its fields; change is possible, but tends to come gradually. But while this may certainly characterize his multilateral social environments, other forms of international hierarchies—bilateral military access agreements, economic assistance packages of international financial institutions (IFIs), or the assessment of an international election observation mission—are also susceptible to the instrumental calculations and disruptive political whims of smaller states. This is precisely because their more dyadic contractual nature renders them vulnerable to outbidding by alternative patrons or because they might carry unacceptable domestic political externalities (e.g., conditionalities) that local rulers may reject.
The multilateral settings that Pouliot explores in textured detail are long-standing ones where the actual authority and purpose of the institution are rarely questioned by most of its members, while precise pecking orders seem to be in constant flux. But other forms of international social hierarchies, such as international state rankings, clearly designate the position of each actor, making the evaluating actor’s authority, judgments, and normative assumptions inviting political targets. It also would be interesting to apply Pouliot’s theoretical approach to such emerging or newer institutions as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in order to observe whether these organizations, which tout principles of sovereignty, noninterference, and/or non-Western solidarity, reproduce similar patterns of social stratification as their Western multilateral counterparts.
Finally, at a time when the United States is questioning its own leadership within the multilateral architecture of the liberal order by willingly withdrawing from a number of multilateral institutions (UNESCO) and agreements (Paris Agreement, Trans-Pacific Partnership), the significance of Pouliot’s insights may be dramatically displayed. If the author is right that the social dimensions of international interactions can operate independently of the distribution of material resources, then Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from these international commitments and reductions of permanent diplomatic staff abroad amounts to nothing less than reckless geopolitical self-destruction. The key test is whether U.S. global influence is seriously curtailed over the long term as a result, or whether high levels of military spending and overt transactionalism are sufficient for securing its preferred international governance outcomes.
International Pecking Orders is a landmark work that will change how international relations scholars view the purpose and practice of multilateral diplomacy, as well as the bottom-up determinants of international hierarchy. It deserves to be widely read, vigorously debated, and applied widely to a variety of settings and institutions within the global governance field.
