Introduction

In each of the three moments of regime building discussed in the previous chapters, a tension between sovereign equality and legalised hegemony has been the mark of a foundational moment in the development of the international legal order. In the early nineteenth century, the Great Powers established the institution of legalised hegemony through the procedures and substantive law of the Congress of Vienna (Chapter 4). The Concert of Europe began as a ‘usurpation’ but ended by legitimising hegemony and endowing it with an institutional respectability it had hitherto lacked. The idea of legalised hegemony seemed to have, at least for the time being, and despite the exertions of some of the smaller powers, trumped the Westphalian principle of sovereign equality. Throughout the nineteenth century, public international lawyers wrestled with this new phenomenon. Some rejected hegemony as ‘illegal’ or ‘political’, others viewed it as a new constitutional norm. At the same time, in international legal practice, legalised hegemony, in the uncompromised form found at Vienna, was, by the late nineteenth century, giving way to a more participatory and egalitarian international legal order (Chapter 4). In particular, the newly admitted smaller states began agitating for greater representation in international institutions (Chapter 9). The Great Powers, however, were not disposed to give up too much of their authority.

This tension culminated in a moment of crisis at the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907.