Political Survival and Sovereignty in International Relations

Why do political actors willingly give up sovereignty to another state, or choose to resist, sometimes to the point of violence? Jesse Dillon Savage demonstrates the role that domestic politics plays in the formation of international hierarchies, and shows that when there are high levels of rent-seeking and political competition within the subordinate state, elites within this state become more prepared to accept hierarchy. In such an environment, members of society at large are also more likely to support the surrender of sovereignty. Empirically rich, the book adopts a comparative historical approach with an emphasis on Russian attempts to establish hierarchy in post-Soviet space, particularly in Georgia and Ukraine. This emphasis on post-Soviet hierarchy is complemented by a cross-national statistical study of hierarchy in the post WWII era, and three historical case studies examining European informal empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Introduction. Hierarchy and international politics; 1. Political survival and the surrender of sovereignty; 2. Submission, resistance, and war: national politics and Russian hierarchy in Georgia and Ukraine since independence; 3. Subnational politics and sovereignty in post-Soviet Georgia; 4. Mass politics and the surrender of sovereignty; 5. European informal empire in China, the Ottoman Empire and Egypt: hierarchy and informal empire in historical context; 6. Cross national variation in sovereignty and hierarchy; 7. Hierarchy, political order, and great power politics.

Jesse Dillon Savage is Assistant Professor of global politics in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College, Dublin.