Alexander D. Barder, Empire Within: International Hierarchy and its Imperial Laboratories of Governance

Abstract

Many scholarly texts in the field of international relations have been published in recent years to show that inter-state relations remain hierarchical rather than anarchic (see, Lake, 2009; Zarakol, 2017). However, these texts focused on the importance of dominant norms in establishing, maintaining and legitimizing hierarchical relationships while ignoring how these norms (i.e., hierarchy) influence the hegemonic powers’ domestic policy. In other words, certain approaches to international hierarchy theorizing disregard the historical and present imbrications, feedbacks and reverberations of political, social, and institutional norms and behaviours that were/are tested in what were/are the (neo) imperial labs that form the primary site of the global order. Empire Within: International Hierarchy and its Imperial Laboratories of Governance, investigates how international hierarchies (as either imperialism or hegemonic) affect the internal policies of hegemonic powers (it means the spread of hierarchies). In this book, Alexander Barder seeks the answer to the following question: ‘In what ways does the practice of empire or hegemony reflect within domestic state institutions, culture, or ways of thinking? How can we understand the effects that the practices of international imperial relations have upon the domestic space?’ (p. 1). To answer this question, Barder (2015, 5–6, 53) develops the following two arguments.