Over the course of his career, Michael Hechter has examined the subtle interplay between dynamics of collective action and national identify formation and mobilization. Alien Rule is perhaps the most ambitious in this line of works in its scope, as it explores no less than “the conditions that have made, and that might continue to make, alien rule legitimate in the eyes of the ruled” (p. 7). The simply posed puzzle, Hechter’s disarmingly straight forward explanation, and a rabble-rousing selection of cases make the book a vital contribution to the analytical literature on empires, international hierarchy, and the sociology of organizations more broadly.
Antipathy to alien rule is rooted in nationalist sentiment and, in modern times, the powerful norm of sovereignty. Self-determination, according to Hechter, is so pervasive in modern times that no type of alien rule can be held normatively legitimate (p. 16). Instead, the author develops an instrumental notion of legitimacy that allows for a governed population to comply with the governance of ruling “out-group,” even in the absence of coercion.
To secure legitimacy, rulers must first provide a stream of culturally relevant public goods to governed populations and, second, ensure that these are fairly allocated. This unabashedly rationalist logic is perhaps the most well-developed theoretical exposition of “efficacious authority” to date—and the argument’s logic is applied to several different types of external governance including colonial regimes, contemporary military occupations, international post-conflict administration, and even NGO-administered governance. These insights also complement David Lake's relational contracting perspective on international hierarchy that observes that client states accept the authority of a patron in exchange for providing security and/or economic privileges.
The book’s chapters are as fascinating as they are eclectic. Hechter confronts the near scholarly taboo surrounding the “alien rule/legitimacy” issue, but also selects controversial cases that themselves have spawned heated political and historiographical debates. Chapter 3 traces the history of foreign rule in Iraq, dating from the Ottomans to the British Empire and then native rule under Saddam Hussein, concluding that political stability will remain elusive in the post-U.S. intervention reconstruction phase as long as Iraq’s oil wealth is unequally distributed.
Chapter 4 compares and contrasts the acceptance and legitimacy of Japanese colonial rule in two South Korea and Taiwan, demonstrating how Japanese colonial rule “yielded greater acceptance” in Taiwan (p. 95) than in Korea where colonial policies fostered growing resistance. Hechter also develops three further propositions concerning the timing of occupation, incentives for collaboration offered to native elites, and the efficacy of rule in promoting economic modernization and development, thereby also weighing into the debate on the effects of Japanese colonialism on postwar East Asian development.
Chapter 5 focuses more narrowly on the dynamics of collaboration and legitimacy of military occupations, advancing a provocative analysis of the calculations made by Palestinians who decide to collaborate with Israeli authorities. Chapter 6, co-authored by Gail Dubrow and Debra Friedman, extends the logic of the argument to a quite different organizational domain—academic departments and the logic of receivership. Here, the authors show how externally appointed Chairs can return order to departments torn apart by disciplinary incoherence and resistance to institutional planning. A concluding chapter broadens the scope of the argument even further, speculating favorably on the potential for an international market for governance services and insightfully reminding us that the World Cup, one of the most nationalist sporting spectacles in the world, supports the argument’s logic given that a significant portion of national teams hire foreign national managers for their expertise. Alien rule is seemingly disrupting national boundaries all around.
Hechter’s analysis raises a number of analytical questions. The first and essential question, which would seem critical to a comprehensive rationalist account, is why rulers, even when adequately informed of the need to provide fairly allocated collective goods, still fail to do so. Even a potentially effective alien ruler is unlikely to become legitimate if the previous regime was effective and suddenly toppled or capriciously replaced. Inadequately performing native rule seems to be an implicit antecedent condition for the theory’s logic to operate.
Second, the instrumentalist theory of legitimacy also assumes what is at times an unrealistically long time-horizon and enlightened strategic outlook. As Hechter himself observes, alien rulers may just prefer to use their privileged positions for predation to extract maximum rents for themselves and their narrow band of political allies, even if the center prefers more equitable allocations. Indeed, this is a dominant strategy given the considerable costs of governing directly and effectively. Or the center may actually be unconcerned with legitimacy altogether, preferring to just secure control. The cautionary tale of the extreme rent-seeking and oppression of the Belgian Congo, representative of many European colonial arrangements, is a classic example, as is the contemporary example of Russia appointing client rulers in the North Caucasus or the breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Third and fourth, factionalism and its contours within the target society will have profound implications for the parameters of any alien governance, while their management by the ruler sends important signals to other peripheries. As Hechter argues, “[A]n occupier who is aware of the preexisting ideological, political, social or ethnic cleavages in native territory and takes advantage of them will be more likely to succeed” (p. 112). Hechter’s Iraq and Japanese colonialism chapters further explore some of these analytical implications, but the issue could be tackled with more deduction and precision. Are decisions to empower or privilege one faction, which erode the fairness of public goods allocation and the legitimacy of rule, the result of resource constraints, the relative size of prominent factions as winning coalitions, or do they reflect a prior disposition to trust one identity-based group of intermediaries over others? If the latter, then identity resurfaces as an important orienting device even within strategic decisions about governance, while these decisions will have important ramifications across other peripheries.
To take the example of academic receivership further, the dysfunction of departments is just as likely to be rooted in intense personality conflicts that map onto and reinforce the disciplinary divides among its faculty. Consequently, external chairs may bring order not by effectively and equitably responding to all concerns, but by actually judging and handing a decisive victory to one of these competing factions. In turn, what the victorious faction and the university administration regard as effective and legitimate may simultaneously be viewed as ruthless and unjust by the vanquished and their allies in other universities whose departments are characterized by similar fault lines.
Finally, though the policy implications of Hechter’s argument seem clear—especially within the context of discussing the efficacy of international peace building in post-conflict societies—the actual market mechanisms proposed for these tasks might be self-defeating according to the author’s own logic. Much of the dysfunction of the U.S. led reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan were rooted in relying on contractors whose organizational incentives were to obfuscate and misreport problematic public goods projects, not improve their allocation. On the other hand, Hechter’s analysis might give an additional reason to take the lending activities of China and other so-called “emerging donors” seriously as acts of international influence. It is exactly Beijing’s emphasis on improving infrastructure and public goods in target countries—often secured by concessions in primary commodities—that might make its style of investment and aid more attractive that Western conditional project grants and loans.
Like any classic “big-issue” social analysis, Alien Rule prompts us to revisit a whole range of political and social phenomena in an unexpected and thought-provoking new analytical light. Hechter’s argument and provocative case applications will both inspire and infuriate, most likely along predicable theoretical and methodological divides, but its basic insights cannot be ignored by the growing number of scholars engaged with the politics of international hierarchy.
