International Institutions and Order in Journal

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As Ikenberry points out in his book's first chapter, institutions play different roles depending on the order structure currently in place, with hegemonic systems of governance relying on institutions to consolidate power and destabilize potential sources of opposition, and constitutional systems employing institutions to empower the citizenry and provide "checks and balances" to governmental authority (15).

Any comprehensive analysis of international order must also address the issue of disorder, and Ikenberry covers this aspect of the issue by examining historical instances of anarchistic rule. For as long as human beings have transformed naturally ethnic and cultural factions into organized nation states, the politically charged process of dividing the planet's limited territory has left certain groups without native land to call their own. The phenomenon of these so-called stateless nations has been produced by a confluence of geopolitical circumstances, but in all areas of the world there are cultural groups who refuse to recognize their preordained national identities (Ikenberry, 272). Ancient and competitive claims of ownership on the same holy ground have left the Palestinian people with an ever shrinking sliver of soil on which to stand, while the interventionist policies of international governance redrew historical borders, with the unfortunate Kurds becoming the odd men out in a post-World War I restructuring of the Middle East map. In Spain, where economic instability has spawned widespread social upheaval, citizens of both the Basque region and the Catalan islands have been inspired to form politically active separatist movements.

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Stateless nations are by no means restricted to the European continent, and in the industrialized, modern society of Canada a divisive debate has continually raged between the residents of Quebec, who are fiercely defensive of their French language and heritage, and the predominately Anglo national government (Ikenberry, 242). In each case, distributions of power and institutionalized systems of order devised many centuries ago have proven to have lasting ramifications on the relations of neighboring civilizations, and only by studying the tragic state of collective purgatory endured by stateless nations can one begin to understand how entire cultures can be abandoned by the global structure of order. As Ikenberry states conclusively, "even when alternative institutions might be more efficient or accord more closely with the interests of powerful states, the gains for the new institutions must be overwhelmingly greater before they overcome the sunk costs of the existing institutions" (70), which is why existing nations have demonstrated such extreme resistance to the reordering that would occur when so-called stateless nations are granted autonomy as sovereign states......

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