Power, shared ideas and order transition: China, the United States, and the creation of the Bretton Woods order
| Author | Amy King |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221118787 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221118787
European Journal of
International Relations
2022, Vol. 28(4) 910 –933
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221118787
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Power, shared ideas and
order transition: China, the
United States, and the creation
of the Bretton Woods order
Amy King
The Australian National University, Australia
Abstract
The claim that transitions in international order are not only products of transitions in
power, but also products of transitions in shared ideas is now relatively uncontroversial
in the International Relations literature. Yet persistent gaps remain in understanding how
ideas are shared, and which states play a role in sharing an international order’s ideas. This
paper demonstrates that ideas are shared through social, interactive processes, which
involve both superordinate states and subordinate ones. Nevertheless, as a result of
their unequal power, subordinate state agency is typically expressed when subordinate
states operate in conjunction with superordinate ones, a finding that poses empirical
challenges for studying subordinate states’ ideas and their order-shaping role. To resolve
this challenge, the paper explores how a pair of superordinate and subordinate states –
the United States and the Republic of China – operated in conjunction with one another
to shape the transition to a post-WWII order at Bretton Woods. It examines cases
of idea convergence and divergence between the United States and China; carefully
disentangles the conscious and unconscious drivers of idea convergence; and highlights
three distinct mechanisms – amplifying, grafting and resistance by appropriation – through
which subordinate states shape a changing order’s shared ideas.
Keywords
International order, power, English School, constructivism, political economy, norms
Corresponding author:
Amy King, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT
2600, Australia.
Email: Amy.King@anu.edu.au
1118787EJT0010.1177/13540661221118787European Journal of International RelationsKing
research-article2022
Article
King 911
Introduction
Traditionally, International Relations (IR) has conceived of transitions in international
order as the product of transitions in power. Rationalist scholars, particularly those work-
ing from the perspective of hegemonic stability theory, view international orders as
reflective of the preferences of the most powerful state involved in shaping that order
(Keohane, 1980; Krasner, 1976). Accordingly, the transition to an open, liberal economic
order after World War II (WWII) – a case of order transition analysed frequently by IR
scholars – occurred because material power was concentrated in a liberal United States.
In a ‘constitutional’ variant of the rationalist argument, the post-WWII order not only
reflected the liberal preferences of a hegemonic United States, but also US choices to
limit its exercise of power through multilateral institutions (Ikenberry, 2001).1 Yet in
leaning heavily on the power and preferences of the hegemon, rationalist accounts under-
play both the ideational dynamics and the role of states other than the hegemon in order
transition. The few rationalists who reflect on ideas view them through an instrumental
lens, arguing that states only resort to ideas to negotiate the benefits that arise from an
underlying material power distribution (e.g. Vabulas and Snidal, 2020). Consequently,
they bracket off questions about how an order’s fundamental characteristics came to be.
I argue that transitions in international order are not only products of changes in mate-
rial power but also of changes in shared ideas, and that subordinate states – as well as
superordinate ones – play crucial roles in the process of idea sharing. In Part I, I draw on
John G. Ruggie (1982) to demonstrate that without recognising its shared ideational
basis, we cannot understand an order’s content, legitimacy, or its endurance. Yet while
the shared ideational basis of international order and order transitions are now well estab-
lished, the IR literature remains relatively silent on the critical questions of how ideas are
shared, and which states play a role in sharing ideas at moments of international order
change.
To explore these questions, Part II makes two analytical moves. First, it examines how
ideas are shared, moving beyond the binary ‘top-down or bottom-up’ perspectives that
have dominated the International Political Economy (IPE) and norm diffusion litera-
tures, and instead drawing upon English School and constructivist approaches that
emphasise the social and interactive ways in which the ideas comprising an order’s ‘pri-
mary’ and ‘secondary institutions’ are arrived at.2 Second, it considers how power, and
particularly unequal power, affects the sharing of these ideas. Rationalists have focussed
too much on power at the expense of ideas, but we would be mistaken in abandoning
power altogether in our quest to understand how an order’s ideas are shared. I show that
subordinate states do have agency in shaping ideas at moments of order transition, but
only when they operate in conjunction with superordinate state(s). When their ideas
diverge from those of the superordinate state(s), subordinate states can shape the creation
of a new, shared idea by: (1) grafting their ideas onto those of the superordinate state(s),
or (2) by appropriating superordinate state(s’) ideas and using those ideas to delegiti-
mise, and thus resist, those of the superordinate state(s). When superordinate and subor-
dinate states’ ideas converge, however, we must pay attention to how more ‘insidious’
kinds of hegemonic structural and productive power affects the sharing of ideas.
Convergence may exist because the subordinate state has consciously chosen to amplify
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