Representants and International Orders
The Staging of Political Authority

Traces how political authority is visualised over centuries of European history and the impact these visualisations have on international order.

Alena Drieschova (Author)

9781009575812, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 May 2025

336 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.658 kg

'Across time and space, practitioners work from a variety of social artifacts that stand in for and inscribe the international system, from maps to rankings through architecture. In a brilliant combination of practice theory and historical approach, Drieschova's path-breaking analysis throws much needed light on the politics of these 'representants' in constituting changing forms of political authority and power constellations.' Vincent Pouliot, James McGill Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University

Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.

Acknowledgements
Part I: 1. Introduction
2. Stability and change of international orders
Part II: Introduction: from universal monarchy to territorial balance of power
3. Monarchia universalis: from ordering principle to threat of order
4. From international hierarchy to balance of power
5. Territory as a power resource
Part III: 6. Liberal governance and its contestation in the European Union
7. Conclusion
Field notes
Interviews
References
Index.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]