In response to challenges facing the current international institutional order, many scholars argue that international institutions have historically acted as motors of inclusion and democratization in global governance. This talk, based on The Closure of the International System, challenges this view, arguing that the history of the international system is a series of institutional closures, and that a core purpose of institutions such as diplomacy, international law, and international organizations has been to legitimate a stratified system of political equals and unequals. The coexistence of equality and hierarchy is a constitutive feature of the international system and its institutions. This tension is relevant today as multilateral institutions are challenged by disaffected citizens, non-Western powers, and established great powers discontent with the distribution of political rights and authority.

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