The Sovereign State and Its Competitors by Hendrik Spruyt

Author:Hendrik Spruyt
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE CONVENTIONAL EXPLANATION: DARWINIAN SELECTION BY WAR

For some, institutional selection in international politics occurs primarily, perhaps even solely, through war. Given the anarchical nature of the international system, force is viewed as the final arbiter regarding the viability of any institution. In this Darwinian milieu those less able to defend themselves are annihilated. The small fall prey to the large.

One body of literature that has closely studied how war operates as a selective mechanism is the hegemonic rivalry literature.7 It argues that dominant actors in the system are periodically challenged and defeated. Thus, Spain gave way to the Netherlands and England. In turn, the Netherlands lost its position to England. But a closer look at this literature reveals that it focuses on a different set of issues than the one with which we are concerned. The hegemonic rivalry literature largely focuses on rank order change between similar types of units. It explains, in Gilpin’s terms, rank order, or systemic change.8 War determines position. My work, however, focuses on the selective process between dislike units. Specifically, why did sovereign states prove to be superior to city-states or city-leagues?9 This form of selection is constitutive rather than positional. To use Gilpin’s terminology again, it is a systems change, a change in the character of the constitutive units of the international system.10

Despite the fact that hegemonic rivalry literature and long-cycle literature pay little attention to the type of competing units, it is still worth examining whether their causal explanation might also hold true for competition between different forms of organization. That is, could selection between dislike units be explained by success in war? Because of the predatorial nature of the international realm, all units have to be able to wage war in order to survive. Accordingly, if particular forms of organization fall by the wayside, this must be explainable by their inability to wage war as effectively as their rivals. It is simply a matter of Darwinian survival of the fittest.

There are several variations to this type of explanation. One variant compares sovereign states to the preceding feudal mode of organization. According to this explanation, sovereign states could raise more revenue and larger concentrations of troops than their feudal predecessors. In short, efficiencies of scale made sovereign states superior in waging war.11 The problem with this type of account is that the synchronic alternatives to the sovereign states, that is, city-leagues and city-states, were also superior to feudal forms of organization. As we have seen in the past few chapters, the ability of states to develop new military technologies, hire mercenaries, and use artillery were also part of the repertoire of the states’ rivals. The Hansa had the ability to raise considerable numbers of troops and to equip large fleets. Its successes against Denmark, England, Holland, and Sweden attest to that. When Lübeck aided Denmark against Sweden in the sixteenth century, it did so with some of the largest and most advanced ships of the time.12 City-states were even closer to the cutting edge of military developments.

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