Table Of ContentDaniela Russ, James Stafford (eds.)
Competition in World Politics
Global Studies
Daniela Russ, born 1987, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto
and the University of Guelph, Canada. Trained as a historical sociologist in Ber-
lin, New York, and Bielefeld, she is currently working on her first book, Working
Nature: Steam, Power, and the Making of the Energy Economy (1830-1980). Her research
interests lie in historical epistemology, energy history and the critical theory of
nature.
James Stafford, born 1988, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Training
Group “World Politics” at Bielefeld University. A historian of Ireland, Britain and
Europe since 1750, his first book, The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the Eu-
ropean Order 1776-1848, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. He com-
pleted his Ph.D. in History at Cambridge University in 2016, and worked as a Lec-
turer in Modern History at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, before coming to Bielefeld
in 2017.
Daniela Russ, James Stafford (eds.)
Competition in World Politics
Knowledge, Strategies and Institutions
We would like to record our thanks to Professor Mathias Albert, Dr. Mustafa Ak-
sakal, Catharina Wessing, Kim Keller and Gaby Trompetero for their advice and
assistance with the workshops and with this volume. We are also grateful for the
participation and ideas supplied by other workshop attendees not represented
in the volume: Jens Bartelson, Aziz Elmuradov, Sandra Holtgreve, Jutta Joachim,
Marc Kidson, Iver B. Neumann, Karlson Preuss, Yasin Sunca and Gladys Vsquez.
This volume was made possible by funding from the German Federal Research
Council (DFG) Research Training Group GRK 2225/1 'World Politics'. The Research
Training Group hosted two workshops on 'Competition in World Politics’ at Biele-
feld University in 2018 and 2019, which produced the majority of the contributions
included in this volume.
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First published in 2021 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld
© Daniela Russ, James Stafford (eds.)
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Cover illustration: James Gillray, ʻThe Plumb-pudding in danger, or, State epicures
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Contents
Introduction
DanielaRuss&JamesStafford...................................................... 7
Status and International Organizations
StatusinEarlyModernandModernWorldPolitics
CompetitionorConflict?
RamyYoussef......................................................................35
NetworkPowerEuropeandCompetition
attheUNHumanRightsCouncil
AnatolyBoyashov...................................................................61
SocialMobilityintheGlobalOrder
RisingPowersandtheConvertibilityofCapitals
KatjaFreistein&ThomasMüller....................................................83
Knowledge, Ideology and Competition
TheCivilizingForceofNationalCompetition
U.S.NationalistReasoningintheMid-to-LateNineteenthCentury
JohannesNagel&TobiasWerron.................................................. 107
‘FreeTrade’andtheVarieties
ofEighteenth-CenturyStateCompetition
JamesStafford................................................................... 133
TheDevelopmentofNeoliberalMeasuresof Competitiveness
DieterPlehwe..................................................................... 155
CompetingPowers
Engineers,EnergeticProductivism,and the End of Empires
DanielaRuss&ThomasTurnbull................................................... 183
Competition and Emergent Technologies
DiplomacyandArtificialIntelligence
inGlobalPoliticalCompetition
DidzisKļaviņš..................................................................... 213
Small,Smart,Powerful?
SmallStatesandtheCompetitionfor Cybertech Superiorityinthe
DigitalAge
MadeleineMyatt...................................................................233
BetweenStrategicAutonomyandInternationalNorm-setting
TheEU’sEmergent“Cyber-Sanctions”Regime
YuliyaMiadzvetskaya.............................................................. 261
Afterword
CompetitionDuringCovid-19
HeidiTworek......................................................................289
AbouttheAuthors............................................................ 301
Introduction
DanielaRuss&JamesStafford
Competitionisacentralorganizingprincipleofmodernworldpolitics.Rank-
ingsprovidedbyinternationalorganizationsarepredicatedonanideaofper-
manentcompetitionbetweenstatestoachieve‘excellence’inarangeofpolicy
fields:fromhealth and educationto defense,inequality andbusiness taxa-
tion.Beyondtheseexplicitlyorganizedformsofcompetition,statesareoften
observedtobecompetingforlessclearlydefinedgoods:power(ofthe‘soft’
andthe‘hard’variety),wealth,attention,influence,andstatus.Theyarefre-
quentlyjoined(andchallenged)inthisbyarangeofotherprominentglobal
actors,suchascharities,majorworldreligions,multinationalcorporations,
andarmedinsurgencies.
Therelevanceofcompetitiontocontemporaryliteratureson(amongoth-
ers) neoliberalism,US-China relations,trade,technological change,energy
andsecurityislargelytakenforgranted.Yetcompetitionitselfisrarelyprob-
lematized or explored in its own right. This volume interrogates competi-
tionfromaninterdisciplinaryperspective,combininghistory,sociology,legal
studiesandinternationalrelations.Webelievethatthisinterdisciplinaryper-
spectiveisnecessarytounderstandthemultiplicityofformsandcontextsin
whichconceptsandpracticesofcompetitionstructuremodernworldpolitics.
InthemainstreamIRliterature,‘competition’or‘competitivebehavior’is
handledinoneofthreeways.Realistandneorealistscholarsmakecompeti-
tionanexplicitfocusoftheirresearch,counterposing‘competition’to‘coop-
eration’asoneoftwopossiblepolesofstatebehaviorunderconditionsofan-
archy,insecurityandlimitedknowledge.Identifyingthefactorsorsituations
thatmightleadstatestoemphasize‘competition’or‘cooperation’aspartof
theirstrategicpostureisaprimaryconcernforthisscholarship(Glaser2010).
InMarxianandBourdieusianapproachestoIR,meanwhile,constantcom-
petitionovereconomic,cultural,orsymbolic‘capitals’isapriorassumption
thatisrarelyinterrogatedinitsownright(Wallerstein2004;Bigo2011).Lib-
8 DanielaRuss&JamesStafford
eralscholarsof‘globalgovernance’emphasizetheimportanceofinternational
organizationsasspacesforcooperation,aswellasfornormative‘contestation’
overunderlyingvalues(Wiener2014).
Inthisvolume,weseektounderstandthecomplexesofknowledge,strate-
gies and institutions that make it possible to conceive of world politics in
terms of‘competition’.The contributions gathered here attempt to identify
theconcreteconditionsunderwhichcompetitionhasbecomeagloballyrele-
vantpoliticalcategory.Theyexploretherelationshipsbetweendifferentforms
ofcompetitioninpastandcontemporaryworldpolitics.Andtheyanalyzethe
responsesofarangeofactorstothespecificformsofworld-politicalcompe-
titiongeneratedbytheseshiftinginstitutionalandideationalcontexts.
In the rest of this introduction,we identify and explain the main con-
toursofthisperspectiveontheroleofcompetitioninworldpolitics.Thenext
sectionexplainstheneedtointerrogatetheconceptofthecompetitionnot
simply from the perspective of individual state behavior, but from that of
“worldpolitics”(Albert2016)—understoodasahistoricallyconditionedsocial
system—asawhole.Thethirdsectionoffersashortconceptualhistoryofthe
term competition in European social and political theory of the eighteenth
andnineteenthcenturies,culminatingintheclassicsociologicalaccountsof
SimmelandWeber.Wefindthattheseareparticularlyusefulforconstructing
adistinction—atonceanalyticalandnormative—between‘competition’and
‘conflict’.
Thefourthsectionthenelaboratesonthisdistinctionbyoutliningabrief
outlineofthestructuralfeaturesandnormativejustificationsforaworldpol-
iticsbasedontheideaof‘competition’.Thefifthsectionpivotstoaconsider-
ationoftheusesof‘competition’withinandbeyondthedisciplineofIR,be-
ginningwithrealist,neo-realist,constructivistandBourdieueandiscussions
ofthetermbeforeconsideringrecentdevelopmentsininternationalpoliti-
caleconomyandhistoricalsociology.Thesixthsectiontakesthisdiscussion
forwardtothepresentday,examiningcontemporaryforeignpolicydiscourse
onthe‘newstrategiccompetition’andhighlighting,inparticular,theemer-
gentparadigmof‘weaponizedinterdependence’asawayofunderstanding
the strong technological and economic focus of competitive state practices
incontemporaryworldpolicies.Thefinalsectionthensummarizesindivid-
ualcontributionstothevolume,establishinghoweachhelpsustoconstruct
anewunderstandingof‘competition’asacentralcategoryinmodernworld
politics.
Introduction 9
Contextualizing‘Competition’
Existingparadigmsofinternationalrelationstheoryrarelyaddresstheques-
tionof‘competition’directly.Aswediscussinfurtherdetailbelow,‘competi-
tion’islargelyanassumedcategoryforscholarswhoareprimarilyinterested
inpredictingstates’behaviorintheinternationalsystem.Onerecentsurvey
ofcurrentresearchproposesadefinitioninpreciselythesebehavioralterms:
“Competitionintheinternationalrealminvolvestheattempttogainadvan-
tage,oftenrelativetoothersbelievedtoposeachallengeorthreat,through
the self-interested pursuit of contested goods such as power, security,
wealth,influence,andstatus.”(Mazarretal.2018:5)
This definition rests on a rationalist and agent-centered account,in which
competitionappearsasonepossiblestrategyindividualstatescanadoptfor
dealingwiththeinnateinsecurityofinter-statepolitics.Fromamoreinter-
disciplinaryperspective,however,itraisesmorequestionsthanitanswers.
Economists,economichistoriansandsociologistshavelonginvestigatedthe
conditionsofcompetitioninmarkets,cultureandeducation(White1981;Burt
2009; Uzzi 1997; Beckert 2009; Bürkert et.al.2019).Markets,in particular,
haveincreasinglybeenunderstoodasa“socialorder”,where“reciprocalex-
pectationsonthepartofmarketactors…havetheirbasisinthesocial-struc-
tural,institutionalandculturalembeddingofmarkets”(Beckert2009:245).
Merelyfocusingonindividualagentsandtheirrelationshiptoaglobalbalance
ofpowerforecloses,wesuggest,adeeperinvestigationofthe‘embeddedness’
ofcompetitioninthesociallyandhistoricallyconditionedstructuresof“world
politics”(Albert2016;Buzan/Lawson2015).
Despite the continued expansion of international political sociology
and historical international relations as sub-fields in international studies,
however,competitionamongactorsintheinternationalrealm—whetherfor
wealth,power,technological superiority,or prestige—has not been socially
orhistoricallycontextualizedtothesamedegreeasotherkeyideasininter-
nationalrelationstheory,suchasanarchy(Keene2001)orhierarchy(Zarakol
2017).To begin to address this gap,we propose two starting points for the
investigationofcompetitioninworldpolitics.
ThenextsectiondrawsontheclassicaccountsofGeorgSimmelandMax
Webertodevelopasociologicaldefinitionof‘competition’asaformofsocial
interaction which can be analytically separated from conflict.We illustrate
thatthisdistinctioncarriedanormativeaswellasananalyticalimplication
