Abstract
Practices of comparison underpin many ordering practices in world politics. As IR usually analyses these practices separately, it lacks an overarching framework that accounts for and allows studying the variegated ways in which comparisons con-tribute to the (re)making of international orders. We aim to develop such a framework by conceptualising international orders as products of the ongoing enactment of a nested fabric of multiple ordering practices. We argue that the salience and effects of particular comparisons depend, firstly, on the constellation of actors that produce and circulate comparative knowledge in a given domain of world politics and, secondly, on the salience of the ordering practices to which the comparisons are linked within the nested fabric of ordering practices. After outlining possible research strategies for studying the co-evolution of practices of comparison and international orders, we illustrate our framework with a case study of the ways in which power comparisons have informed ordering practices such as club governance and balance of power politics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
International orders were not always organised around (nation-)states as primary actors. Historically, dynasties and empires were prominent forms of organising political authority. Following established custom in IR, we nevertheless stick to the term ‘international’ orders to denote macro-scale social orders among polities.
Following Schatzki (2012: 14), we understand practices as ‘open-ended, spatially-temporally dispersed nexus of doings and sayings’.
We bracket the complex question of how much harmonisation is necessary for ordering practices to be effective. A perfect synchronisation of all comparisons is obviously not necessary. The evaluations of credit rating agencies are similar but not fully congruent. Too much incongruence, however, can have destabilising effects. For example, for balance of power politics to work as a social institution, the evaluations of the relevant powers have to be fairly congruent (Wohlforth 1993: 8‒9).
This is not to say that no one publishes power rankings. The Correlates of War Project (2021) notably compiles the ‘Composite Indicator of National Capability’ (CINC). However, we are interested in whose comparisons inform the ordering practices. While widely used by IR scholars, the CINC has so far not formed the basis for the distribution of special rights in IOs or for arms control treaties.
For an overview of publishers of statistics on armaments and the arms trade, see Lincove (2018).
References
Abdelal, Rami R. and Mark Blyth (2015) ‘Just Who Put You in Charge? We Did: CRAs and the Politics of Rankings’, in Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder, eds, Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, 39–59, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Adler, Emanuel (2019) World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Adler, Emanuel and Patricia Greve (2009) ‘When Security Community Meets Balance of Power: Overlapping Regional Mechanisms of Security Governance’, Review of International Studies 35(S1): 59–84.
Adler, Emanuel and Vincent Pouliot (2011) ‘International Practices: Introduction and Framework’, in Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, eds, International Practices, 3–35, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Albert, Mathias (2016) A Theory of World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Albert, Mathias and Kerrin Langer (2020) ‘Die Geschichte des Streitkräftevergleichs in der internationalen Politik: Machtvergleiche und die Macht des Vergleichens’ [The History of Military Force Comparisons in International Politics: Power Comparisons and the Power of Comparison], Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 27(2): 34–64.
Allan, Bentley B. (2018) Scientific Cosmology and International Orders, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barnett, Michael and Raymond Duvall (2005) ‘Power in International Politics’, International Organization 59(1): 39–75.
Beck, Silke and Martin Mahony (2018) ‘The Politics of Anticipation: the IPCC and the Negative Emissions Technologies Experience’, Global Sustainability (1)e8: 1–8, available at https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2018.7 (last accessed on 24 September, 2021).
Bemmann, Martin (2019) ‘Comparing Economic Activities on a Global Level in the 1920s and 1930s: Motives and Consequences’, in Willibald Steinmetz, ed., The Force of Comparison: A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World, 242–65, New York, Oxford: Berghahn.
Bially Mattern, Janice and Ayşe Zarakol (2016) ‘Hierarchies in World Politics’, International Organization 70(3): 623–54.
Bielfeld, Jakob Friedrich von (1760) Institutions politiques. Tomes premier et second [Political Institutions. Volume One and Two], La Haye: Pierre Gosse.
Bowden, Brett (2009) The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Brankovic, Jelena, Leopold Ringel and Tobias Werron (2018) ‘How Rankings Produce Competition: The Case of Global University Rankings’, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 47(4): 270–88.
Broome, André and Joel Quirk, eds (2015a) ‘The Politics of Numbers: Special Issue’, Review of International Studies 41(5): 813-1010.
Broome, André and Joel Quirk (2015b) ‘Governing the World at a Distance: The Practice of Global Benchmarking’, Review of International Studies 41(5): 819–41.
Bueger, Christian (2014) ‘Pathways to Practice: Praxiography and International Politics’, European Political Science Review 6(3): 383–406.
Bueger, Christian and Frank Gadinger (2015) ‘The Play of International Practice’, International Studies Quarterly 59(3): 449–60.
Bull, Hedley (2002) The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edn., Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Buzan, Barry (2004) From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buzan, Barry and George Lawson (2015) The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, Ian (2005) Legitimacy in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Ian (2011) Hegemony in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cooley, Alexander (2015) ‘The Emerging Politics of International Rankings and Ratings: A Framework for Analysis’, in Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder, eds, Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, 1–38, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cooley, Alexander and Jack Snyder, eds (2015) Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Correlates of War Project (2021) National Material Capabilities (v6.0), available at https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/national-material-capabilities (last accessed on 24 September 2021).
De Flasson, Gaetan de Roxi (1811) Histoire générale et raisonée de la diplomatie française, tome sixième [A General and Reasoned History of French Diplomacy, Sixth Volume], Paris: Treuttel et Würtz.
Desrosières, Alan (1998) The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Duchhardt, Heinz (1997) Balance of Power und Pentarchie. Internationale Beziehungen 1700‒1785 [Balance of Power and Pentarchy: International Relations 1700-1785], Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.
Dülffer, Jost (2003) ‘Vom europäischen Mächtesystem zum Weltstaatensystem um die Jahrhundertwende’ [From the European System of Powers to a Global System of States at the Turn of the Century], in Martin Kröger, Ulrich Soénius and Stefan Wunsch, eds, Im Zeichen der Gewalt: Frieden und Krieg im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 49–65, Köln: Böhlau Verlag.
Epple, Angelika and Walter Erhart (2015) ‘Die Welt beobachten: Praktiken des Vergleichens’ [Observing the World: Practices of Comparison], in Angelika Epple and Walter Erhart, eds, Die Welt beobachten: Praktiken des Vergleichens, 7–31, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
Espeland, Wendy Nelson and Michael Sauder (2007) ‘Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds’, American Journal of Sociology 113(1): 1–40.
Fehl, Caroline and Katja Freistein (2020) ‘Organising Global Stratification: How International Organisations (Re)Produce Inequalities in International Society’, Global Society 34(3): 285–303.
Goldblat, Jozef (2002) Arms Control: The New Guide to Negotiations and Agreements, London: Sage.
Hall, Christopher (1987) Britain, America and Arms Control, 1921‒1937, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.
Heintz, Bettina and Tobias Werron (2011) ‘Wie ist Globalisierung möglich? Zur Entstehung globaler Vergleichshorizonte am Beispiel von Wissenschaft und Sport’ [What Makes Globalization Possible? Explaining the Emergence of Global Horizons of Comparison in Science and Sports], Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 63(3): 359–94.
Heintz, Bettina (2016) ‘“Wir leben in einem Zeitalter der Vergleichung”: Perspektiven einer Soziologie des Vergleichs’ [‘We Live in an Age of Comparison’: Contours of a Sociology of Comparison], Zeitschrift für Soziologie 45(5): 305–23.
Huber, Max (1909) ‘Die Gleichheit der Staaten’ [The Equality of States], in F. Berolzheimer, ed., Rechtswissenschaftliche Beiträge. Juristische Festgabe des Auslandes zu Josef Kohlers 60. Geburtstag, 88–118, Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke.
Hurrell, Andrew (2007) On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ikenberry, John (2001) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ikenberry, John (2016) ‘The Rise, Character and Evolution of International Order’, in Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Falleti and Adam Sheingate, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism, 538–52, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Keene, Edward (2013) ‘The Naming of Powers’, Cooperation and Conflict 48(2): 268–82.
Keene, Edward (2014) ‘The Standard of “Civilisation”, the Expansion Thesis and the 19th-century International Social Space’, Millennium 42(3): 651–73.
Kelley, Judith G. and Beth A. Simmons (2019) ‘Introduction: The Power of Global Performance Indicators’, International Organization 73(3): 491–510.
Klueting, Harm (1986) Die Lehre von der Macht der Staaten: Das außenpolitische Machtproblem in der ‘politischen Wissenschaft’ und in der praktischen Politik im 18. Jahrhundert [The Doctrine of the Power of States: The Problem of International Power in the ‘Political Science’ and in the Political Practice of the 18th Century], Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
Latour, Bruno (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lincove, David (2018) ‘Key Sources of Multinational Data on Conventional and Nuclear Armaments’, Reference & User Services Quarterly 58(1): 11–15.
Little, Richard (2007) The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malito, Debora Valentina, Gaby Umbach and Nehal Bhuta, eds (2018) The Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Martens, Georg von (1873) Die preussische Expedition nach Ost-Asien. Vierter Band [The Prussian Expedition to East-Asia. Fourth Volume], Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Geheimen Ober-Hofbuchdruckerei.
Maull, Hans (2019) ‘The Once and Future Liberal Order’, Survival 61(2): 7–32.
Merry, Sally Engle (2016) The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Merry, Sally Engle, Kevin Davis and Benedict Kingsbury, eds (2015) The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mügge, Daniel (2016) ‘Studying Macroeconomic Indicators as Powerful Ideas’, Journal of European Public Policy 23(3): 410–27.
Müller, Thomas (2020) ‘Institutional Reforms and the Politics of Inequality Reproduction: The Case of the League of Nations’ Council Crisis in 1926’, Global Society 34(3): 304–17.
Müller, Thomas and Mathias Albert (2021) ‘Whose Balance? A Constructivist Approach to Balance of Power Politics’, European Journal of International Security 6(1): 109–28.
Murphy, Craig (1994) International Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance since 1850, New York: Oxford University Press.
Nexon, Daniel (2009) ‘The Balance of Power in the Balance’, World Politics 61(2): 330–59.
Nexon, Daniel and Iver Neumann (2018) ‘Hegemonic-Order Theory: A Field-Theoretic Account’, European Journal of International Relations 24(3): 662–86.
Osterhammel, Jürgen (2014) The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pecquet, Antoine (1757) L'esprit des maximes politiques, pour servir de suite à l'Esprit des loix du Président de Montesquieu [The Spirit of Political Maxims, Serving as a Follow-up to President de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Law], Paris: Prault Père.
Pouliot, Vincent (2016) International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Renshon, Jonathan (2017) Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reus-Smit, Christian and Timothy Dunne (2017) ‘The Globalization of International Society’, in Christian Reus-Smit and Timothy Dunne, eds, The Globalization of International Society, 18–40, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sauder, Michael and Wendy Nelson Espeland (2006) ‘Strength in Numbers? The Advantages of Multiple Rankings’, Indiana Law Journal 81(1): 205–27.
Schatzki, Theodore (2012) ‘A Primer on Practices: Theory and Research’, in Joy Higgs, Ronald Barnett, Stephen Billett, Maggie Hutchings and Franziska Trede, eds, Practice-Based Education: Perspectives and Strategies, 13–26, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Schulz, Matthias (2009) Normen und Praxis. Das Europäische Konzert der Großmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815‒1860 [Norms and Practice: The European Concert of the Great Powers as Security Council, 1815-1860], München: Oldenbourg Verlag.
Scott, Hamish M. (2007) ‘Diplomatic Culture in Old Regime Europe’, in Hamish M. Scott and Brendan Simms, eds, Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century, 58–85, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sending, Ole Jacob (2015) The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Sending, Ole Jacob and Iver Neumann (2011) ‘Banking on Power: How Some Practices in an International Organization Anchor Others’, in Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, eds, International Practices, 231–54, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simpson, Gerry (2004) Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Speich Chassé, Daniel (2013) Die Erfindung des Bruttosozialprodukts: Globale Ungleichheit in der Wissensgeschichte der Ökonomie [The Invention of the Gross Domestic Product: Global Inequality in the History of Knowledge of the Economy], Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Speich Chassé, Daniel (2016) ‘The Roots of the Millennium Development Goals: A Framework for Studying the History of Global Statistics’, Historical Social Research 41(2): 218–237.
Stauber, Reinhard (2014) Der Wiener Kongress [The Congress of Vienna], Wien: Böhlau Verlag.
Steinmetz, Willibald, ed. (2019) The Force of Comparison: A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World, New York, Oxford: Berghahn.
Steinmetz, Willibald (2021) ‘Macht – Leistung – Kultur: Staatenvergleiche vom 17. bis ins frühe 20. Jahrhundert’ [Power, Performance, Culture: The Comparison of States from the 17th Century to the Early 20th Century], Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 73(1): 75–112.
Stoler, Ann Laura (2001) ‘Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post)Colonial Studies’, Journal of American History 88(3): 829–65.
Thérien, Jean-Philippe and Vincent Pouliot (2020) ‘Global Governance as Patchwork: the Making of the Sustainable Development Goals’, Review of International Political Economy 27(3): 612–39.
Tian, Nan and Pieter Wezeman (2017) ‘Increased International Transparency in Military Spending is Possible’, SIPRI Website, available at https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2017/increased-international-transparency-military-spending-possible (last accessed on 24 September 2021).
Tooze, Adam (1998) ‘Imagining National Economies: National and International Economic Statistics, 1900‒1950’, in Geoffrey Cubitt, ed., Imagining Nations, 212‒28, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Towns, Ann E. and Bahar Rumelili (2017) ‘Taking the Pressure: Unpacking the Relation between Norms, Social Hierarchies, and Social Pressures on States’, European Journal of International Relations 23(4): 756–79.
Von Sass, Harmut (2011) ‘Vergleiche(n): Ein hermeneutischer Rund- und Sinkflug’ [Comparison: A Hermeneutic Circling and Dive], in Andreas Mauz and Hartmut von Sass, eds, Hermeneutik des Vergleichs. Strukturen, Anwendungen und Grenzen komparativer Verfahren, 25–47, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Waltz, Kenneth N. (1979) Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ward, Michael (2004) Quantifying the World: UN Ideas and Statistics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Webster, Andrew (2005) ‘The Transnational Dream: Politicians, Diplomats and Soldiers in the League of Nations’ Pursuit of International Disarmament, 1920‒1938’, Contemporary European History 14(4): 493–518.
Webster, Charles (1918) The Congress of Vienna, 1814‒1815, London: Oxford University Press.
Wohlforth, William (1993) The Elusive Balance: Power and Perception during the Cold War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at a workshop in Toronto in March 2019. We are grateful to all participants for their constructive comments. We also thank Katja Freistein, Martin Koch and the three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback. This article emerged in the context of the Collaborative Research Centre 1288 ‘Practices of Comparing’ at Bielefeld University funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Müller, T., Albert, M. & Langer, K. Practices of comparison and the making of international orders. J Int Relat Dev 25, 834–859 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-022-00266-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-022-00266-y