Domination for the Rest? Creating and Contesting Secondary State-Led International Hierarchies

Abstract

Existing literature on international hierarchies has focused on great powers, hitherto overlooking those hierarchies led by secondary states. Secondary states lack the capabilities and geostrategic reach of their great power counterparts but nevertheless seek to create subordinate relationships in their immediate regions. We argue that in doing so secondary states draw on strategic toolkits that involve the creation of shared communities and the intensification of material dependencies between superordinate and subordinate. However, more so than great powers, secondary states do not get things all their own way. Recognizing the agency of even the weakest of states, we further contend that potential subordinates employ a range of resistance techniques—which we call firewalls and dissonance strategies. We elaborate on these strategies, and conclude our argument, by applying the theoretical model presented here to the novel case of the Sunshine Policy—a decade of inter-Korean hierarchy formation, contestation, and resistance from 1998 to 2008 in which we claim that South Korea attempted, and ultimately stalled, in its efforts to establish itself in a hierarchical relationship with North Korea.