Introduction

In the next four chapters, I consider the relationship between sovereign equality and a particular form of hierarchy I have called legalised hegemony. I explore four moments of regime design or redesign in which the potentially contradictory principles of sovereign equality (or more specifically, legislative equality) and legalised hegemony were managed and brought into some sort of balance. These moments occurred at Vienna, The Hague, San Francisco and during the Kosovo intervention. These are significant because each of these constitutional ‘moments’ defines a particular era in the history of international law. In particular, these are moments where the tension between equality and hierarchy adopts a specific form, one that proves to be the defining characteristic of the period following it. In this chapter, I focus on the Vienna settlement.

In 1815, a post-Napoleonic directorate of Great Powers sought to manage and order European affairs and re-formulate international law. This process represented a repudiation of the existing Westphalian consensus based on sovereign equality and challenged the underlying assumption that reform of the state system would take place on the basis of that equality. At Vienna, the Great Powers were successful in forging a Concert system in which they played a dominant role.