Hierarchy, Cultural Dissemination, and Conflict: Modeling the Tributary Order

• In Event: International Orders in East Asia

Abstract

Of all the international and regional orders throughout history, perhaps one of the most fascinating is embedded in the tributary system in pre-modern East Asia. As a supranational structure that organizes China’s foreign relations from antiquity to the mid-19th century, the tributary system has challenged some key assumptions in traditional international relations (IR) theories, such as sovereignty equity and balance of power. Compared with some regional orders in European history, the tributary order not only seems to be more stable and resilient but also becomes a facilitator of the dissemination of Confucian culture in East Asia. While a burgeoning literature in recent years has identified some key features of this non-western order, surprisingly, not much has been done to examine how various factors interact with each other to generate mechanisms that lead to the rise of the Chinese hegemony and the emergence of the Confucian sphere. In this paper, I derive an agent-based model to emulate the “life cycle” of the tributary order. Building on Robert Axelrod’s cultural dissemination model, James Fearon’s bargaining model, and the gravity model, this tributary model teases apart the mechanisms that produce the rise of a hegemon, the screening effect of interstate conflict, and the emergence of cultural spheres in an international context. The model should provide a better understanding of the relationship between international hierarchy and interstate conflict and the dissemination of ideology or values; it should also shed light on the future of American hegemony and a regional order with an ascendent China in the Asia-Pacific.

Author

• Haoming Xiong, Ohio State University