Bad influence: social networks, elite brokerage, and the construction of alliances

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.

Domestic courts, transnational law, and international order

“…The practice of domestic law—dispute resolution, rule generation, and the bounding of state authority—redistributes international political opportunities and structures the key norms and principles that guide international order. Moreover, it points to a broader conception of global political authority in which transnational dynamics shape both the domestic and international (Crasnic et al, 2017; Halliday and Shaffer, 2015; McNamara, 2018; Sazak and Kadercan, 2020).…”

“…national vs international, public vs private, or hard vs soft law), which often stymie debates on international order. Instead it calls for greater attention to the interplay and interaction between levels of authority, forms of governance, and types of actors (Sazak and Kadercan, 2020).…”

Enfolding wholes in parts: quantum holography and International Relations

“…It emphasizes the fundamental non-separability of whole-part and non-locality of parts and rejects their apparent particularism (Barad, 2007: 333). More than simply related to each other at arm’s length (in terms of external relations, namely conventionally observable external links such as family ties, social networks, trade agreements, and alliances [see, for example, Sazak, 2020, in this Issue]), parts in quantum holography are inherently entangled and mutually implicated, even in the absence of formal or explicate connections. At this juncture, it is worth making a brief detour to the philosophical debate on internal and external relations in the early 20th century (see Moore, 1919).…”