Rational Empires: Institutional Incentives and Imperial Expansion. Leo Blanken. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

When Leo Blanken’s Rational Empires: Institutional Incentives and Imperial Expansion was published in 2012, it seemed to be a book out of step with the world. Rather than treating the relative placidity of the post-Cold War era as the “end of history,” as per Francis Fukuyama’s infamous pronouncement, the arguments in Rational Empires suggest that the seeming rules-based international order of that period might be seen as a fragile equilibrium.[1] Further, the book posits the conditions under which this equilibrium would fall apart. In fact, the last sentence of the book predicted the types of territorial revisionism that the world has been witnessing over the last decade: “the end of U.S. hegemony may also lead to the end of ‘the end of history’ … we may even see a gradual reintroduction of…seemingly archaic forms of imperial behavior in the future.”[2]

There are few recent academic works that provide a theoretical framework to contextualize territorial conquest as a tool of great power behavior. Given recent events in Eastern Europe, this appears to be a lacuna. The literature on international security for the last three decades has primarily focused on the twin problems of terrorism and insurgency as the principal threats to the global status quo, and in doing so has neglected the role of conquest as an instrument within great power competition. The emerging era of bare-knuckled territorial aggrandizement by revisionist great powers, therefore, has largely caught the academy underprepared. Given this, I offer a ten-year anniversary review of a book that could assist in shaping our understanding of the changing nature of the international system today.

The central argument of Rational Empires is about domestic institutions. Blanken argues that whether a nation is democratic or autocratic creates a web of incentives and constraints for leaders when it comes to choices around territorial conflict. The economies of autocratic states tend to be distorted by the flowing of wealth to small numbers of supporters who keep the autocratic leader in power, while democratic leaders tend to grow healthy economic activity to satisfy their wider, voting public. Autocracies have a pressing need to acquire additional resources due to the rent-seeking behavior endemic to such political systems; this results in a dominant strategy of imperial expansion. Blanken argues that this explains why autocratic states often engage in territorial acquisition to the point of exhaustion. Democratic nations, on the other hand, tend to take territory only under specified conditions, namely, to reduce uncertainty when targeted territories do not have attractive institutions for economic or diplomatic penetration. He employs the analogy of vertical integration among firms, such as when an automobile manufacturer purchases an upstream tire supplier to illustrate this logic. This explains why the arising democracies of Europe built large, territorial empires in the 19th century but abandoned them relatively rapidly in the 20th.

Autocracies have a pressing need to acquire additional resources due to the rent-seeking behavior endemic to such political systems; this results in a dominant strategy of imperial expansion.

These arguments concerning institutional incentives are used by the author to derive three distinct equilibria regarding the likelihood of conflict around territorial acquisition. Blanken labels the first equilibrium pugnacious imperialism, which is when great powers grab territory while simultaneously fighting one another. Blanken terms the second equilibrium courteous imperialism, which  is when great powers can peacefully divide colonial territory among themselves. Blanken refers to the third equilibrium as refraining, which is when great powers allow weak actors to exist unmolested in the anarchic international system. Most of human history has been characterized by pugnacious imperialism, as powerful actors regularly fought one another over territorial control. Recent decades have been characterized by powerful actors refraining from imperial expansion in what has been labeled the rules-based international order. The most interesting era, which is the focus of the book’s empirical analysis, is the 19th century, in which all three equilibria are observed. This period provides a solid platform for detailed qualitative testing of the empirical implications of Blanken’s argument. Therefore, the three cases examined in Rational Empires, Africa, China, and the Indian subcontinent, show the explanatory power of the model at work.

Blanken selects the colonial experiences of Africa and China as cases for comparative analysis. In doing so, the author attempts to solve many puzzles of this period that remain in the literature. Why did the relatively democratic European powers of Great Britain, France, and Germany engage in large-scale formal colonialism in Africa while simultaneously refraining from territorial expansion in China? In the Chinese case, Blanken’s analysis shows that, despite coercive bargaining with the Qing Dynasty in what is now labeled the “Unequal Treaty System,” these European powers and the United States worked diligently to prop up the Qing and prevent the dissolution of their moribund state. This was done in an effort to gain access to Chinese markets while not paying the costs of formal colonization. The final collapse of this refraining equilibrium in China was eventually driven by the actions of Russia and Japan. These autocratic actors destroyed the refraining equilibrium, fought one another over Chinese territory, and eventually drove the final collapse of the Qing.

In Africa, however, Blanken shows that Great Britain, France, and Germany behaved very differently than they did in China. Due to the lack of local institutional stability in tropical Africa, these democratic states were driven to bear the costs of colonization to gain access to markets and resources. Blanken shows that this so-called “Scramble for Africa,” however, was in fact a series of surprisingly efficient arrangements that allowed for the peaceful “checker-boarding” colonization of the continent. His reinterpretations of Africa and China in the 19th century are noteworthy because the model explains the widely varying imperial behavior of all of the relevant actors based on the incentives generated by their domestic political institutions.

The case of India is used by Blanken as a longitudinal analysis of British activity on the subcontinent over three centuries. Blanken makes specific predictions about the acquisition, maintenance, and decolonization of India based on evolving democratic institutions back in Britain. More specifically, he shows that as democracy evolved in Britain, it placed increasing pressure on the British East India Company’s monopoly, eventually leading to its dissolution. British access to Indian markets became more inclusive, more public goods were generated in India, and this “Jewel in the Crown” of the British empire was decolonized relatively early and peacefully. Blanken argues that the evidence in this case undercuts Marxist interpretations of imperialism, as the East India Company—one of the largest monopoly actors in the history of the world—was slowly strangled and decapitated by the evolving democratic institutions in Britain. 

Other recent territorial encroachments, such as Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and China’s seizure and militarization of islands throughout the South China Sea, hinted at this new way of conducting international politics, but the invasion of Ukraine has removed any lingering doubts—the international community needs to be prepared for territorial acquisition as a re-emergent strategy in great power competition.

The further Russian invasion of Ukraine has shaken the world. Beyond the daily parade of atrocities that are being inflicted upon the Ukrainian people, observers have been shocked by the larger implications of Russia’s choice to redraw territorial boundaries in Europe through naked force.[3] The General Secretariat of the European Union, for example, said that "Russia’s war of aggression constitutes a tectonic shift in European history."[4] Other recent territorial encroachments, such as Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and China’s seizure and militarization of islands throughout the South China Sea, hinted at this new way of conducting international politics, but the invasion of Ukraine has removed any lingering doubts – the international community needs to be prepared for territorial acquisition as a re-emergent strategy in great power competition. What might Blanken’s work tell us about these events and their implications for the rules based international order? Does his analysis of the classic age of imperialism provide tools for understanding the current international environment?

To build a bridge between Blanken’s work and current affairs, one must take only a few logical steps. The first is to ascertain the meaning of the term “rules based international order.” A recent report from the Atlantic Council defines it as a system of norms, principles, and formal institutions constructed by leading democratic allies at the end of the Second World War that focuses on “global security, the economy, and governance…in addition to rules that protect state sovereignty and territorial integrity.”[5] Two things are worth noting here. The first is the fact that safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of weak states became the sine qua non of the rules-based order, largely by enabling the survival of fledgling decolonized nations through institutions such as the United Nations.[6] Such protection of weak actors by the global community represents an essential transformation in the functioning of the international system. Second, however, are the mechanisms by which this protection would occur. Even referring to a “rules-based international system” borders on being an oxymoron, in that the rules can only be enforced by sovereign states who would voluntarily choose to exercise their power.[7] As the international system remains essentially anarchic, any structure laid upon that anarchy – such as shared norms, principles, voluntary membership in institutions – lacks a mechanism for universal, authoritative enforcement.[8]

These mechanisms of peaceful change were unclear, however; they were based on shared norms and the universal valuation of increased gains from trade that were unfettered with political distortions. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, it seems that these mechanisms have still not worked on such actors as Russia and China.

How is such a system supposed to work? The initial champions of the “rules-based” system were the democratic allies of the Cold War, while the Soviets and Chinese generally served as institutional spoilers. The end of the Cold War, however, created a wave of hubris around the universal triumph of Liberal democracy and fostered the hope that a true rules-based order at the system level could finally come to fruition.[9] Underlying this line of thinking is the idea that an international system should become a “coordination game.”[10] This game theoretic model is applied to situations in which all parties can benefit from cooperating on standards from which, once reached, no individual actor would benefit from a unilateral violation. The vision of the rules-based order was that through the construction of international coordination institutions that facilitate economic activity, gains from trade to all nations would be increased. In his discussion of the use of coordination games for understanding international cooperation, Duncan Snidal explains how the construct of a coordination game can be used to think about international norms and conventions: “No centralized enforcement is necessary, because [no] state has incentive to depart from an established convention” International institutions’ roles would largely be limited to “providing information and communication to facilitate the smooth operation of the convention.”[11]

The problem with such a vision of the international system are bad actors - such as autocratic actors - who cheat or exploit such institutions. It was assumed in the 1990s that these actors would eventually be brought on board with the rules-based system - either by being violently transformed, such as Iraq in 2003, or peacefully transformed through political acculturation and the material benefits of free trade.[12] These mechanisms of peaceful change were unclear, however; they were based on shared norms and the universal valuation of increased gains from trade that were unfettered with political distortions. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, it seems that these mechanisms have still not worked on such actors as Russia and China. It is the failure of these transformation mechanisms on these powerful autocracies that has prevented the rules-based order from taking hold.

The arguments in Rational Empires might be used to shine explanatory light on the invasion of Ukraine and its meaning in the larger decline of the rules-based international order. It does so in two ways.

First, the central argument of Rational Empires is about domestic institutions. Whether a nation is democratic or autocratic creates a web of incentives and constraints for leaders when it comes to choices around conflict over territory. The supposed transformational mechanisms of the rules-based order cannot, in and of themselves, override autocratic institutional incentives to seize control of resources in order to flow wealth to a small number of supporters who, in turn, keep the leader in power. If Russia abandons its bid for Kiev, the model in Blanken’s book predicts that Putin will seek to retain the resource-rich eastern portion of Ukraine to dole out as rewards to his oligarchs.[13] This system of conquest, control, and private goods distribution is at the heart of autocratic grand strategy in Blanken’s work. This accords with recent expert analysis, which argues that Putin is “less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance…‘Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist.’”[14]  

Second, observers have been shocked by the audacity of the Russian invasion. Beyond its wild violation of international norms, Russian forces have turned out to be grossly underprepared to conquer and hold Ukraine.[15] This sense of surprise at autocratic audacity is a consistent theme in Rational Empires. Blanken argues that autocratic states engage in seemingly counterproductive conquest due to their dominant strategy of acquisition. Castilian Spain’s overextension in the New World, Portugal’s tenacious grip on its African colonies, even Russia’s overexpansion in the Far East, which one historian described as “peculiarly unaccountable… Russia had done enough annexing [but it appeared that it] could not stop the process.”[16] Blanken’s model provides a coherent explanation for these surprising behaviors by explicating the inexorable nature of autocratic leaders’ incentive structures. This overexpansion was a trap by and large avoided by democratic states that either eschewed large territorial empires, like the United States, or dissolved them relatively quickly and peacefully, like Great Britain.[17]  

In conclusion, what does Blanken’s model of imperial behavior tell us about the current landscape of great power competition? First and foremost, it shows that autocratic leaders are more likely to pursue expansionist policies whenever given the opportunity. We have seen the autocratic regimes in Russia and China repeatedly push the boundaries of imperial behavior and we should expect this trend to continue. Based on the arguments in Rational Empires, these regimes cannot be satisfied by playing by the rules of liberal institutions. Second, because  autocratic leaders find it exceedingly difficult to participate in any refraining equilibrium, they can be expected to cheat or defect from any such understanding. Given the need for exclusionary control over resources to flow wealth to a small elite, we should anticipate systematic predation on weak actors. Finally, participation in international institutional arrangements cannot be relied upon to “acculturate” these autocratic actors to any cooperative norms, as this is fundamentally at odds with their basic incentives for retaining power in their nations. Democratic states will need to co-exist with these states and can find beneficial ways to interact with them. The critical point, however, is that we can build on Blanken’s work by recognizing the incentives of autocratic leaders to adjust international institutions and develop strategy.

Jason Lepore is a Professor of Economics in the Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University.

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Header Image: Russian THeader Image: Russian Invasion of Ukraine, 2022 (Eoiuaa).

Notes:

[1] Francis Fukuyama. The End of History and the Last Man  (New York: Free Press, 1993).

[2] Leo J. Blanken. Rational Empires: Institutional Incentives and Imperial Expansion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp 156-158.

[3] Sabine Siebold. “EU Accuses Russian Troops of Committing Atrocities in Ukrainian Town Bucha,” Reuters, April 3, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-accuses-russian-troops-committing-atrocities-ukrainian-town-bucha-2022-04-03/.

[4] General Secretariat of the Council. “A Strategic Compass for Security and Defense: For a European Union that Protects its Citizens, Values and Interests and Contributes to International Peace and Security,” Council of the European Union, March 21, 2022, https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-7371-2022-INIT/en/pdf.

[5] Jeffrey Cimmino and Matthew Kroenig. Strategic Context: The Rules-Based International System (Washington DC: Atlantic Council, 2020).

[6] Eva-Maria Muschik. “Managing the World: The United Nations, Decolonization, and the Strange Triumph of State Sovereignty in the 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (March 2018): 121-144.

[7] Simon Waxman. “What Rule-Based International Order?” Boston Review, March 2, 2022, https://bostonreview.net/articles/what-rule-based-international-order/.

[8] Dale C. Copeland. “The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay,” International Security, 25, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 187-212.

[9] For a critical essay on this concept, see Timothy Stanley and Alexander Lee, “It’s Still Not the End of History,” The Atlantic, September 1, 2014.

[10] James D. Morrow. “Modeling the Forms of International Cooperation: Distribution versus Information,” International Organization, 48, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 387-423.

[11] Duncan Snidal. “Coordination versus Prisoners’ Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes,” 79, no. 4 (December 1985): 932.

[12] Mona Siddiqui. “Shared Norms in a Globalized World?” Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs Forum, April 29, 2016, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/shared-norms-in-a-globalized-world; Helen V. Milner and Keiko Kubota. “Why the Move to Free Trade? Democracy and Trade Policy in the Developing Countries,” International Organization 59, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 107-143.

[13] Frank Kumbach. “The Energy Dimensions of Russia’s Annexation of Crimea,” NATO Forum, May 27, 2014, https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2014/05/27/the-energy-dimensions-of-russias-annexation-of-crimea/index.html.

[14] Bret Stephens. “What if Putin Didn’t Miscalculate?” New York Times, March 29, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html.

[15] Robert Burns. “Russia’s Failure to Take Down Kyiv was a Defeat for the Ages,” Associated Press, April 5, 2022, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russias-failure-to-take-down-kyiv-was-a-defeat-for-the-ages/ar-AAVUguJ.

[16] Victor Gordon Kiernan. British Diplomacy in China, 1880 to 1885. (New York: Octagon Books, 1970), 282-290.

[17] Desmond King, “When an Empire is not an Empire: The US Case,” Government and Opposition 41, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 163-196; David Strang, “Global Patterns of Decolonization, 1500-1987,” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 4 (December 1991), 429-454.