Bad influence: social networks, elite brokerage, and the construction of alliances
| Author | Selim Can Sazak |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066120938839 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Subject Matter | 25th Anniversary Special Issue |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120938839
European Journal of
International Relations
2020, Vol. 26(S1) 64 –90
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120938839
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Bad influence: social networks,
elite brokerage, and the
construction of alliances
Selim Can Sazak
Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Abstract
If all states want to survive, why do some of them enter unpropitious alliances? International
Relations (IR) theory’s conventional answer is that imperfect information and systemic
complexity result in miscalculation. This explanation begs the question: any alliance that
fails is a miscalculated one, so the puzzle is not whether but why such mistakes are made.
This article imports from recent scholarship on network theory and interpersonal trust
to offer an alternative explanation. Alliances are not entities ethereally formed out of
strategic imperatives, but products of interactions within transnational social networks
of political, military, and business elites in the prospective allies. Such interactions enable
alliances because people who are connected to each other through mutual association
or previous exchanges develop mutual trust and gain subjective certainty about each
other’s intentions and capabilities, which points at a previously ignored mechanism in
alliance behavior: brokerage. In a case study that combines theory-based archival research
and social network analysis, this article uses historical evidence on the Turco-German
alliance to empirically demonstrate the brokerage role Colmar von der Goltz, the head
of the German military mission to the Ottoman Empire, played in the two countries’
relations at the turn of the century and their eventual alliance in the First World War.
The analysis points at a potential means of bridging IR, history, and sociology while
expanding our understanding of alliance behavior and providing policy-relevant insights
on geo-economic competition and the weaponization of interdependence at a time of
growing strategic rivalry on the world stage.
Keywords
International Relations, social network analysis, Ottoman Empire, history, sociology,
alliances
Corresponding author:
Selim Can Sazak, Department of Political Science, Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs,
Brown University, Suite 123, 111 Thayer Street, Providence RI 02912, USA.
Email: selim_can_sazak@brown.edu
938839EJT0010.1177/1354066120938839European Journal of International RelationsSazak
research-article2020
25th Anniversary Special Issue
Sazak 65
Building bridges between International Relations (IR) and history is an endeavor that
attracted much attention from both sides of the gap (Elman and Elman, 2001). One chal-
lenge associated with this task is to redress the Eurocentric biases that excluded from
the discipline’s scope many cases and issues from outside Europe (Hobson, 2012;
Kayaoglu, 2010). Even though the First World War is IR’s “most analyzed and con-
tested case” (Copeland, 2001: 56) and an integral part of its history as an academic
discipline (Porter, 1972), the Ottomans, whose decline was a major cause of the war
(Anievas, 2013: 734–735), were virtually invisible to IR scholars until quite recently
(Bulutgil, 2017; Kadercan, 2014; Nisancioglu, 2014; Savage, 2011; Zarakol, 2010). In
International Organization, they appear only in two articles, with no direct relevance
(Narang and Nelson, 2009; Tetreault, 1991). International Security, another prominent
journal, has only two articles that directly deals with the Ottoman Empire in its publica-
tion history (Bulutgil, 2017; Kadercan, 2014).
Such neglected cases as the Ottoman Empire abound with empirical puzzles. This
article concerns itself with one such example. Both realists and constructivists agree that
all states want to survive (Mearsheimer, 1994: 10; Wendt, 1995: 72). Then, how do
unpropitious alliances like the one between the Ottoman Empire and Wilhelmine
Germany during the First World War come to be? The dominant strand in IR’s alliance
theories is neorealism, which started to find purchase among Ottoman historians as well
(McMeekin, 2011; Reynolds, 2011). Neorealists argue that “states form alliances to pro-
tect themselves [from] the threats they perceive” (Walt, 1987: x). These threat percep-
tions are shaped by geographic proximity, offensive capabilities, aggressive intentions,
and the distribution of power (Walt, 1987: 22). The last factor is viewed as especially
important: systems with more than two powers—multipolarity—are expected to be
unstable because “uncertainties about the comparative capabilities of states multiply as
numbers grow and estimates of the cohesiveness and strength of coalitions are hard to
make” (Waltz, 2000: 6). Thus, interstate conflict has a higher likelihood because states
either rush into war—chain-ganging—or avoid it until it is too late—buck-passing— as
happened in the two world wars (Waltz, 1979: 165–169).
Jervis’s (1978) concept of security dilemma, Waltz’s (1979) chain-ganging hypothe-
sis, and the subsequent scholarship building on them (Christensen and Snyder, 1990,
2011; Lieber, 2007; Snyder, 1984; Tierney, 2011; Van Evera, 1984) offer a realist expla-
nation of the origins of the First World War, but this corpus does not suffice to explain
specific decisions such as why the Ottomans sided with Germany as opposed to another
power like France, which was their main creditor (Geyikdagi, 2011: 51), largest investor
(Geyikdagi, 2011: 57), and a major arms supplier (Grant, 2002: 32–33). Indeed, archival
documents reveal a dissonance between IR’s theories and history’s accounts of alliance
behavior. The Turco-German alliance was the product of frantic negotiations, not a pre-
determined outcome of the strategic environment. Neither were the Ottomans exclu-
sively interested in an alliance with Germany nor was Germany keen to have the
Ottomans on its side (Aksakal, 2008: 93–102). Istanbul was rebuffed the first time it
sought an alliance with Berlin in July 1914 (Weber, 1970: 62–63) and it actively courted
Britain, France, and Russia until Germany ultimately agreed to an alliance on 2 August
(Ahmed, 1984: 14–15). Even thereafter, neither side had much appetite to fight alongside
the other. “For three long months after signing the German alliance,” writes Aksakal
(2011), “[the Ottomans] did everything they could to stay out of the fighting” (198).
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