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International Hierarchy and Functional Differentiation of States: Results of an Expert Survey
This article investigates the existing international hierarchy employing ex-pert survey as its primary method. 'Authority hierarchy' and 'power status hierarchy,' the two existing research traditions of hierarchy studies, are briefly introduced. We demonstrate a gap between basic research on power status, emphasizing its social na-ture, and applied case studies, primarily relying on purely material indicators of a coun-try's capabilities, such as the GDP and CINC. In times of rapid hierarchical shifts, there is a need for a more nuanced and holistic approach. The article suggests placing hierar-chy studies onto the ontological foundation of Niklas Luhmann's Differentiation Theory to overcome these problems. The article gives a brief account of the international so-ciety's segmentary differentiation, stratificatory differentiation (status hierarchy), and functional differentiation (specialization). The paper argues that the functional roles of states and their positions in the international hierarchy are interconnected. The hierar-chy of states' roles, resulting from functional differentiation, is understood in terms of authority hierarchy. In order to lay the ground for further research, the article provides three valuable insights into the international hierarchy. Firstly, we categorize 26 coun-tries as belonging to one of the power status categories (small power, middle power, great power, superpower) as of autumn 2021 based on the survey results. We calculate indices for the states in the survey operationaling their power, roles, public goods pro-vision, and revisionism. Secondly, the paper presents experts' evaluations of the im-portance of various valued attributes (such as the size of the economy, military might, international prestige, autonomy, etc.) for different power status categories. Thirdly, we suggest a novel approach linking a country's position in the international hierarchy to its functional roles. We use correlation analysis to test the hypothesis and compare the roles index to other popular power status indicators.