Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations

By Alexander Cooley

Political science has had trouble generating models that unify the study of the formation and consolidation of various types of states and empires. The business-administration literature, however, has long experience in observing organizations. According to a dominant model in this field, business firms generally take one of two forms: unitary (U) or multidivisional (M). The U-form organizes its various elements along the lines of administrative functions, whereas the M-form governs its periphery according to geography and territory. In Logics of Hierarchy, Alexander Cooley applies this model to political hierarchies across different cultures, geographical settings, and historical eras to explain a variety of seemingly disparate processes: state formation, imperial governance, and territorial occupation.

Cooley illustrates the power of this formal distinction with detailed accounts of the experiences of Central Asian republics in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and compares them to developments in the former Yugoslavia, the governance of modern European empires, Korea during and after Japanese occupation, and the recent U.S. occupation of Iraq. In applying this model, Logics of Hierarchy reveals the varying organizational ability of powerful states to promote institutional transformation in their political peripheries and the consequences of these formations in determining pathways of postimperial extrication and state-building. Its focus on the common organizational problems of hierarchical polities challenges much of the received wisdom about imperialism and postimperialism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780801466397

Book preview

PREFACE

Although the study of hierarchy is making something of a comeback in the public sphere, as can be seen in a renewed interest with imperialism in world politics, its importance as an academic topic is still fraught with controversy. My research interest in the dynamics of empires and military occupations, in how hierarchical polities are organized and governed, has culminated in this book. But so too has the critical commentary I have received at academic seminars and conferences from colleagues who have questioned my seemingly dispassionate approach to these politically charged phenomena. I have repeatedly heard comments such as What is the political purpose of such an investigation? or Why would you want to approach the study of empire in this calculating manner? This book provides answers to such questions.

Above all, this book is motivated by widespread misconceptions about hierarchy in both the academy and the real policy world. For some reason, we have been taught—especially in the field of international rela-tions—that hierarchical polities are relatively functional, ordered, and well-governed entities. In most classes and textbooks, political hierarchy is contrasted with the condition of anarchy, or the absence of a central governing authority, and students are dutifully instructed to note that the self-interest of individual states usually trumps any rudimentary mechanisms of international organization or world governance. Not surprisingly, from such an analytical starting point the dynamics of hierarchy do not seem as intriguing as the origins of war and peace, the interaction of international markets and states, or the role of NGOs and new contemporary challenges to the sovereign authority of states. Moreover, even when we do address the issue of hierarchy in international politics, we tend to spend very little time on its problematic nature: the types of control losses and authority slippages in hierarchical organizations and why the mere imposition of hierarchical governance does not always lead to the outcomes predicted by a dominant power. In truth, we have a caricatured understanding of the politics of hierarchy.

Such misconceptions are not limited just to academic discussions. The most recent U.S. military campaign in Iraq was predicated on the belief that the mere imposition of governance by an external power would automatically transform a political system, culture, and identity. Many believed that Iraqi democracy would be built naturally in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s discredited and brutal regime. Yet the daily stream of gruesome images from post-Baathist Iraq suggests that American hierarchical rule has not been sufficient for maintaining political order or promoting institutional transformation in Iraq. Why not?

It is time to reexamine just how hierarchical political organizations such as states, empires, and military occupations operate and how they actually govern political peripheries. We must explicitly identify the different ways in which hierarchies are organized and explore what types of hierarchical organization are likely to lead to significant institutional transformation in a periphery and what types are likely to fail. The analytical tools required for such an investigation are readily available in the social sciences, yet they have yet to be brought to bear on the topic.

This book has been a long, drawn-out project. Hendrik Spruyt, Jack Snyder, Lisa Anderson, Rajan Menon, and Alexander Motyl—some of the most extraordinary scholars and public thinkers I know—gave me initial support and subsequent feedback that allowed this project to evolve beyond my original expectations. In addition, I am particularly grateful for the invaluable insights and help of peers and colleagues over the years, including Fiona Adamson, Karen Ballentine, Thomas Berger, Padma Desai, Daniel Deudney Jonathan Hopkin, Patrick Jackson, Robert Jervis, Robert Legvold, Kimberly Marten, Martha Merill, Daniel Nexon, Jeffry Olson, James Ron, Adam Sheingate, Peter Sinnott, Robin Varghese, and Thomas Wood. Special thanks go to my colleagues at Barnard College, Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and Columbia’s Department of Political Science for all their support over the years, as well as to the Social Science Research Council for a Title VIII fellowship during the 1997–98 academic year. Publication of this book was made possible, in part, with a grant from the Harriman Institute. Stephanie Boyum read several versions of this manuscript in its infancy and provided extraordinarily helpful guidance, while Adelle Tilebalieva provided excellent research assistance. The external reviewers and editors at Cornell University Press were true partners in shaping the manuscript and improving the quality of the work. Jack Snyder and James Ron encouraged me to apply the theoretical schema to Yugoslavia, although they are in no way responsible for the case’s shortcomings. But my greatest appreciation is reserved for Mark Blyth, who has seen this project evolve over the course of our long and immensely rewarding friendship.

Books are, no doubt, most difficult for those unlucky enough to be around the author. I am thankful to my parents—Eugenia and John Kent Cooley—for their incredible support over these years as well as to my friends and relatives in the United States, Greece, and elsewhere for tolerating my rants. Above all, I thank my life love Nicole Jacoby for showing the patience of a saint and always encouraging me to make headway on the project, even when it involved real sacrifices on her part. She is truly incomparable.

Finally, I thank my two greatest mentors, without whom I would have never entered this business. The first is James Kurth (now Emeritus) of Swarthmore College. All those lucky enough to have been introduced to the world of international politics by him would agree that he is a brilliant, eloquent, and profoundly influential teacher. The second is John Kent Cooley, my father, an insightful political correspondent, fearless critic, and seasoned observer of world affairs for many years. This book is dedicated to him.

Alexander Cooley

New York, New York

CHAPTER ONE

UNDERSTANDING HIERARCHY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

A central motivation of the United States in its 2003 invasion of Iraq was to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and fundamentally change the domestic political institutions and political culture of an oil-rich Middle Eastern country. Proponents of the campaign argued that American military power could and should be wielded in order to promote democratization, speculating that a free Iraq would serve as an important model of political transformation for the surrounding region. Summarizing this view, on November 6, 2003, United States President George W Bush declared that American foreign policy, as embodied by events in Iraq, had adopted a forward strategy for freedom.¹

Although the overall military and strategic goals of the Iraq campaign were relatively clear (if controversial), the mechanisms through which the reconstruction and transformation of Iraq took place were not. Politicians and analysts of various political leanings criticized the American occupation of 2003–4 as disorganized, piecemeal, and lacking an overall strategy. The initial decision by the Pentagon-appointed Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to disband the old Baathist-operated institutions of the Iraqi state, most notably the Iraqi military, clashed with the practical requirements of stabilizing the country and establishing political order. The original plan to convene a national convention to draft a new Iraqi Constitution was postponed when it became clear that Iraq’s ethnic and religious differences, not new political parties or Western political ideologies, endured as the basis for political affiliation. Dozens of American companies were assigned major reconstruction contracts amidst criticisms of noncompetitive bidding, cronyism and overcharging, but their overall project coordination was mismanaged and their exact relationship with the interim ministries and government agencies remained ill-defined. Throughout all of these political difficulties, the security situation in pockets of the country destabilized to the point where a permanent insurgency, not Coalition forces, controlled several cities. As the American occupation revealed, successful reconstruction was a far more challenging task than most policymakers had anticipated before the start of the military campaign.

From a historical perspective, the optimistic prewar assumptions of U.S. policymakers about governing Iraq were hardly atypical. Rulers of expanding states, empires, and military occupations consistently have assumed that the mere imposition of hierarchical rule would allow them to transform a periphery’s domestic institutions according to their national values, ideologies, and preferences. Such ambitious plans to enact dramatic and fundamental change were often compromised by the practical realities of governance. Whether we look at imperial Japan’s attempt to transform Manchuria (Manchukuo) into a neighboring utopia, Soviet efforts to transform the very social fabric and identities of its Eurasian satellites, France’s campaign to impose its civilizing values in Western Africa, or current American efforts to promote its supposedly more enlightened and progressive form of empire at the beginning of the twenty-first century, successful instances of institutional transformation have been rare.

Although such organizational issues often lie at the heart of understanding the political governance of states, empires, and occupations, we rarely address them as objects of analysis or formulate empirical investigations around them. Scholars of empire and hierarchy, much like policymakers, often place excessive emphasis on the ideology or identity of a particular polity and ignore the common organizational issues and dilemmas that confront all hierarchical polities. What types of hierarchical organization are more likely to promote institutional change in a periphery, and what types will entrench preexisting political and social structures? What kinds of institutions do various types of hierarchical rule and governance mechanisms create within a periphery? When will actors entrusted with formal governing authority complete the tasks they are assigned as opposed to acting opportunistically in their own self-interest or colluding with peripheral actors? In short, how can we better understand the causal effects of hierarchical organization on the institutional formation and development of governed polities?

A LESSON FROM MANAGEMENT STUDIES: THE IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS

Political analysts rarely address questions about hierarchical organization, yet these same issues are the explicit focus of management scholars concerned with understanding the organizational properties and trade-offs associated with various types of economic organization. Management scholars examine the mechanisms and incentive structures through which hierarchical governance within corporations is exercised and the powerful causal effects they exert. Variation in the organization of firms accounts for important differences in firm behavior as well as the behavior of individual actors within them.

Perhaps the most widely recounted anecdote about the importance of corporate organization is the comparison of the contrasting interwar era fortunes of the American auto-manufacturing giants Ford Motor Company and General Motors. Both companies managed a number of divisional lines and products and both were making the transition from wartime production to producing commercial vehicles. Yet, during the 1920s and 1930s, General Motors grew at almost an exponential rate while Ford remained mired in a productivity slump and internal fighting.

In his pioneering study of the organizational evolution of the American firm, business historian Alfred Chandler advanced a simple expla-nation for the contrasting fortunes of these corporate giants.² The variation in corporate performance, he argued, was explained not by standard variables such as product quality or capital investments but by how each firm organized its production lines and administrative divisions. In the case of Ford, executive management retained its prewar unitary form of organization, in which subordinate divisions were divided according to function. Accordingly, each division—such as finance, marketing or engineering—was responsible for its particular functional responsibilities across all of the different cars and products the company produced. Chandler observed that this functional structure created severe inefficiencies by encouraging infighting and fierce competition among the divisions concerning the overall strategic decisions of the firm. Each division advanced its own preferences regarding the company’s overall strategy and goals, thereby equating its own divisional interests with those of the firm. In the meantime, a weak core executive allowed this interdivisional conflict to persist, believing it could consolidate the core’s wavering authority by arbitrating these factional disputes and brokering compromises among the self-interested divisions.³ Like a weak monarch clinging to power by playing his various subordinates and councilors against one another, the central management office at Ford became embroiled in an organizational mess that crippled its ability to effectively govern.

The dysfunctional organization of Ford contrasted sharply with the contemporaneous organizational revolution initiated by Alfred Sloan at General Motors. Sloan’s innovative reorganization eliminated the previous functional structure of the corporation and replaced it with a set of semiautonomous divisions, organized by geographic area and product. Under this new multidivisional structure, the executive core was freed from making routine everyday decisions and took on the primary responsibilities of setting general strategic goals and monitoring the performance of its various divisions. The reorganization proved so successful that by the onset of World War II, General Motors increased its market share from 12 percent to 50 percent, successfully diversified its product line and, like a dynamic empire, even expanded operations to overseas subsidiaries.⁴ This form of corporate organization endured well into the postwar era.

Chandler’s analysis of the contrasting fortunes of the organizationally dysfunctional Ford with the dynamic General Motors is still used to instruct students of business administration in the importance of form and structure in economic organizations. Is there a comparable lesson here for political analysts? If variation in hierarchical organization can have such profound effects on the incentive structures, behavior, and performance of corporate entities, should we not expect it also to have a significant causal impact on the structure and institution-building capacities of political entities?

AN ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY OF POLITICAL HIERARCHY

This book uses these basic insights of management scholarship to develop a new organizational approach to the study of hierarchy in international politics. I define hierarchy as a condition of relational power in which a dominant polity possesses the right to make residual decisions while the other party—the subordinate member—lacks this right.⁵ Drawing on the organizational distinctions developed by Alfred Chandler and, later, economist Oliver Williamson, I argue that hierarchies can be governed as either a unitary form (U-form) or a multidivisional form (M-form).⁶ The U-form organizes its periphery according to distinct administrative functions (such as sales, manufacturing, and finance), which require integration and coordination by the center for the whole range of products produced by the firm (fig. 1.1). By contrast, the M-form governs its subordinate divisions according to product or geography, as each division is relatively autonomous and encapsulates a wide range of functions so that it can successfully produce its particular product (fig. 1.2). This distinction between functional governance and territorial governance is the central insight of the firm-type model outlined in this book.

FIGURE 1.1

The Unitary Form (U-form) adapted from Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies (New York: Free Press, 1975), 134

Each of these forms of hierarchy represents a distinct type of political organization studied by political scientists. U-forms of political organization are associated most often with state-formation and functional modes of integration and political consolidation while M-forms characterize most types of modern imperial organization and overseas military occupations. In still other cases, polities such as socialist federations (Soviet Union, Yugoslavia) have employed both modes of organization across different sectors of governance. Conceptualizing political governance in terms of U-forms and M-forms provides a common set of conceptual tools to examine the political dynamics of what are usually assumed to be disparate polities.

FIGURE 1.2

The Multidivisional Form (M-form) adapted from Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies (New York: Free Press, 1975), 138

In terms of their causal governance effects, the U-form and M-form create varying types of political institutions in their peripheries—harmonizing institutions in U-forms and patrimonial institutions in M-forms—and encourage different forms of opportunism within their administration. Consequently, their organizational capacity to promote institutional change within a given periphery will also vary. Across a range of conceptual and practical issues relating to political governance, differences in organizational form will account for important variations in political behavior. This book develops a theory of organizational forms and political hierarchy and advances a number of testable propositions and insights regarding its conceptual and practical applications.

METHODOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS: COMPARING ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Drawing on a body of work originating in a different discipline, in this case managerial studies and organizational economics, inevitably begs the question of whether the analogy is apt and whether the economic and political spheres are actually comparable. In employing the firm-type model, I do not wish to imply that states, empires, and other polities ultimately share the same goals or values that a firm would have in a market setting. Obviously, as organizational entities, firms are driven by the overriding need to maximize profits within the competitive setting of the market. While states also face competitive pressures for survival within the international system, they pursue a number of additional goals and objectives. Nor in making the analogy to the organization of firms do I mean to imply that such analogies should be the only or correct way that scholars should think about the politics of hierarchy. Organizational theory is but one of a number of approaches that can be applied to the subject.

Rather, what is important for this project is that both economic firms and political hierarchies are forms of complex social organization that, when organized, administered, or delegated according to similar logics, will face common problems and challenges related to these logics. By applying the firm-type model to political settings, one can better understand how individual administrators, regardless of their exact functions or task assignments, will behave when faced with similar organizational pressures and imperatives. Accordingly, not only do functional and territorial hierarchical governance exhibit similarities across both economic and political contexts, but the logic of the argument should hold for a broad range of functions and issues that are managed by political organizations, including both security and economic affairs.

Finally, in presenting this study, I do not make any normative judgments regarding the merits or desirability of hierarchy over other types of political organization. The sad fact remains that, historically, a wide variety of political organizations—including states, empires, and military occupations—have been responsible for inflicting a tremendous amount of human suffering for their respective political causes. Studying the organization of these political hierarchies does not condone them any more than studying a particular political party would associate the analyst with that party’s platform. But just as we should not necessarily take the word of a party elite as to how her organization operates internally, so too we should be skeptical of the governing ideologies and publicly stated claims of rulers of hierarchical polities. Whatever the officially stated purpose of a particular state or empire, in-depth study of its actual organization is necessary to accurately explain its political dynamics.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY OF HIERARCHY

This organizational theory of international hierarchy is consistent with recent efforts in international relations to study vertical integration as a central political process in international politics. Drawing on a related literature in the economics of organization or the new institu-tionalism, such institutional approaches have typically tried to determine the conditions under which states, in both the international economy and the security sphere, prefer to enter hierarchical governance arrangements instead of more traditional forms of statecraft.⁷ Such approaches also fundamentally differ from more traditional approaches to international politics and international organization that focus on variables such as relative power distribution and identity-based processes