The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

Realism

Realism recognises the existence of domestic and international hierarchies. Kenneth Waltz writes that whilst the international system is anarchic, the domestic structures of states are hierarchical because political authority is centralised: ‘domestic politics is hierarchically ordered. The units – institutions and agencies – stand vis-à-vis each other in relations of super- and subordination’ (Waltz, 1979: 81). Waltz adds that domestic hierarchies depend on the ‘specification of roles and differentiation of functions’ (Waltz, 1979: 82). He is less interested in qualifying the types of domestic hierarchies than he is in the functions of the units within the structure. For him, hierarchy is related to functions rather than to identities. The question remains unanswered as to how these roles and functions are determined in the first place during the process of state formation.

While structural hierarchies exist domestically, for Waltz the international system is defined by anarchy. Hierarchies within states exist because of functions that distinguish between different levels of authority – but internationally, all states have the same function. For Waltz, capacity differences do not create hierarchies that matter in terms of a structural theory of the international system. Other realists have, however, written about international hierarchies. Stephen Krasner (1999) argues that notwithstanding the anarchic nature of the international system, imbalances in the capabilities of states lead to stratifications, and that these matter for understanding the interactions between more powerful and weaker states. Imbalances between states may well depend on domestic attributes and differences in capabilities. Nevertheless, in the realist conception, interactions between domestic and international hierarchies remain a one-way story. International hierarchies are attached to power differences and, as Krasner writes, impact the domestic sphere when powerful states impose norms upon weaker states in order to control domestic behaviour. In this account, the role of domestic hierarchies in shaping international hierarchies is overlooked. The assumption that states all have the same function allows for the bracketing off of domestic identity and behaviour.

Despite the fact that new states formed on the basis of self-determination often did not comply with the standards of political organisation imposed by older states, this has, nonetheless, affected their international standing. Just like after World War I, during the other 20th century waves of post-imperial state formation, older states have exercised the authority to discipline new ones and stigmatise them for not being ‘like them’, or for not behaving appropriately according to the standards that they set.

Institutionalism

Institutionalism acknowledges the importance of domestic politics in the constitution of international hierarchies, though not all scholars have granted it the same attention. David Lake excludes the domestic level from his study of international hierarchy (Lake, 2009: xi) while other authors such as Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt (2009) focus on states’ internal politics to explain international hierarchies. By connecting the domestic and international spheres, institutionalists blur the distinctions between the two (Cooley, 2005; Cooley and Spruyt, 2009; Spruyt, 2005).

In Cooley and Spruyt’s account, as much as in Lake’s work, the presence of hierarchy is explained by trade-off logics, namely that more powerful actors either impose certain standards, or that weaker actors accept to have these imposed on them. Actors rationally choose to enter into certain types of hierarchical arrangements in line with their interests. However, Jason Sharman writes that rational explanations are not sufficient to explain the existence of international hierarchies. To understand these hierarchical arrangements, we need to combine rationalist explanations with the ‘logics of appropriateness’, namely the perspective that views norms as drivers of appropriate behaviour (Sharman, 2013). While Sharman’s argument is an important addition that helps explaining the persistence of imperial arrangements in today’s international system, both the rationalist and the ‘logics of appropriateness’ approach are premised on the assumption that actors have the possibility to choose, either what is in their interest or what they deem to be the more suitable outcome. In both instances, actors make a rationally motivated choice: ‘I think I should enter this hierarchical relationship because it is in my interest;’ ‘Although I have an exit option, I think I should remain in this hierarchical relationship because it is the rightful thing to do’.

Yet, this type of explanation only works if actors have the possibility to choose the specific arrangements in which they find themselves or which they decide to enter from the start (whether these arrangements be hierarchical or horizontal). Aspiring states do not really have much choice but to comply with what older states tell them to do (or be) if they want to be seen as sovereign equals. This is an aspect that institutionalist approaches do not grasp entirely.

Interpretivism

In the introduction to her edited volume on hierarchies in world politics, Ayse Zarakol writes that scholarship has generally relied on two understandings of hierarchy, a broad and a narrow one. The broad view sees hierarchies as ‘deep structures of organised inequality that are neither designed nor particularly open to renegotiation’ (Zarakol, 2017: 7). Hierarchy produces the actors’ worldviews, shapes their behaviour and produces ‘the space of world politics in which they act’ (Zarakol, 2017: 7). The narrow view understands hierarchy as a ‘legitimate order of authority in which super-ordinate and subordinate alike have some material function and/or social interest’. These, for example, are ‘consensually erected hierarchies underwritten by international law’ (Zarakol, 2017: 9). Zarakol (2017: 9) writes that these two views have usually not coincided, as a result of differing ontological assumptions.

With important differences, interpretivist authors, including constructivists, English School, critical, post-colonial and feminist scholars, have provided various instruments for examining hierarchies, whether they be old and new, narrow and broad, or formal and informal. Hierarchies are not just a matter of rational choice or of capabilities. As constructivists argue, actors’ practices and social identities are equally important in explaining their existence (Adler-Nissen and Pouliot, 2014; Pouliot, 2016; Sharman and Hobson, 2005; Towns, 2012). Legal hierarchies exist, but they are interlinked with or impinge on other political, social and moral hierarchies internationally, which are difficult to identify (Millennium Special Issue, 2014; Pouliot, 2016). What is more, as discussed in the previous section, feminist and post-colonial authors have shown that deeply entrenched ideational as well as material structures, which persist across time and space, have fostered inequalities based on categories such as race, gender and class.

The point has also been made that by focusing on elusive forms of hierarchy, the concept may lose its heuristic power (Donnelly in Zarakol, 2017: 251–252). Not every form of inequality qualifies as hierarchy. That being said, interpretivism offers a thicker view that helps to identify, as this study does, different types of hierarchies – old or new, domestic or international, formal or informal – and how these interact with each other. Yet, while constructivism and, to some extent, the English school have examined nested hierarchies in world politics, neither addresses their ‘origins’. For reasons related to the social conception of the international system (as discussed in the previous section), interpretivists largely disconnect the formation of hierarchies within and among states from the politics of self-determination and state formation. Critical scholarship, in turn, largely understands the presence of new hierarchies as an inheritance from the past. New forms of hierarchies between and within states are thereby attached to inherited forms of inequality, be these material or ideational. Yet, as the following two sections will show, while many recent hierarchies derive from unequal politics of the past, not all do.

Overall, scholarship tends to view inequality between states as a problem attached to violations of the sovereignty principle, be it due to clashing values, power imbalances, inherited stratifying logics or the hypocrisy of actors. And to a great extent, this is also the case. That being said, most authors overlook the role of self-determination in establishing hierarchies at the moment the international society expands. As my historical analysis of the post-World War I period will show, hierarchies among states are not only the result of a compromise between more or less powerful sovereign states. Instead, in 1919, stratifications among and within states were enshrined in the Minority Treaties imposed on the newly formed states as part of the politics of self-determination, domestic and international.

Self-determination and international disciplining

If, as most scholars tell us, self-determination became the standard for post-imperial statehood and membership in international society during the 20th century, I argue that, just like any standard, self-determination by definition entails correlative and ‘disciplining’ expectations. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the older and more powerful states and actors delineated international expectations for what counts as ‘good’ domestic order within the new states. The Minority Treaties conveyed norms of the political equality of individuals and the equality of rights as constitutive of the nation-state. Self-determination was imagined as a principle associated with non-interference that would lead to sovereign equality after the breakdown of imperial regimes. However, the dominant narrative about equality among states is compromised by the policing role of older and more powerful actors in the establishment of standards of appropriate behaviour for the new states – at the very moment that the latter’s claims to self-determination were being realised.

Rather than merely leading to the proliferation of the nation-state model, self-determination carries with it a bundle of ideas, values and norms. This ‘normative bundle’, I suggest, plays a part in redefining the criteria for legitimate statehood and membership in international society once it expands. My argument, therefore, contradicts views such as Robert Jackson’s, that self-determination is a ‘categorical right’ that leads to ‘categorical sovereignty’ defined by non-interference (1990: 24, 76). Specific – though, as the next section will make clear, also contradicting – expectations were attached to the principle of self-determination, beyond the recognition of statehood, after 1919. International expectations fostered incongruities in the acceptance of certain claims to recognition and self-determination over others. In Paris, self-determination came to be associated with political equality, and with equality of rights in the treaties that would lead to the recognition of the post-imperial states, while at the same time permitting hierarchies in the recognition of minorities and national groups. Since, internationally, only some groups were recognised over others, stratifications in the allocation of rights and citizenship status occurred within many of the new states.

Domestic politics of self-determination and hierarchical membership

After 1919, the tension between equalitarian aspirations and the hierarchical practices attached to the politics of self-determination also manifested itself at the domestic level, as political élites demarcated the boundaries of the new states’ national political communities. All political communities mark the boundaries of membership in some way through the allocation of citizenship status and certain rights to some individuals but not to others. An unexpected feature of the delineation of membership in post-imperial states stems from the institutionalised way in which hierarchies (rather than the full exclusion) of individuals and groups were put in place. Despite transitions from hierarchical systems of authority to nation-states, the uneven distribution of rights to citizens endured within many post-imperial states. In 1919, as we shall see, the categories of recognition inherited from past imperial censuses were transposed into the new states’ membership policies with the support of the Minority Treaties enacted at the Paris Peace Conference. This hierarchical politics of recognition was reflected in the different allocation of political, social and cultural rights to specific groups of citizens. What I term ‘hierarchical membership’ – either old categories, or hierarchies inherited from the previous imperial politics of recognition on which the new states were formed – sat uncomfortably with equalitarian aspirations of domestic political self-determination.

Writing about the Russian Empire, historian Jane Burbank (2006: 397–398) has coined the term ‘imperial rights regime’ to define the ‘differentiated, alienable, but nonetheless legal and meaningful rights’ that governed Russian notions of citizenship. Burbank explains that ‘difference was a foundation of empire’s existence, essential to the process of defining, allocating, and manipulating rights’ (2006: 403). The author hints at the idea that such imperial practices were transposed into the Soviet rights regime, though she does not investigate this legacy. Therefore, she suggests, given that the Bolshevik Revolution took place in the name of self-determination, hierarchical differentiation also persisted. My argument echoes Burbank’s proposition, although I focus on internationally disciplined post-imperial state formation. The view that independence can be achieved, or a government constituted, simply through ‘the people’s will’ obscures the fact that the precise demarcation of the political community matters for how rights are allocated and exercised domestically. Within the new states, old membership categories inherited from empires were often used to justify the creation of institutional frameworks for hierarchies in national membership. What is more, through the Minority Treaties, this establishment of domestic hierarchies occurred with formal international imprimatur.

In 1990, James Mayall asked why it was that during the 20th century ‘the naturalness of hierarchy, the essential underpinning of the dynastic world’ was ‘replaced by the naturalness of equality, the essential underpinning of the nationalist world’ (Mayall, 1990: 33). My claim questions – to borrow Mayall’s expression – the ‘naturalness’ with which transitions from empires to nation-states are often portrayed. In many post-imperial states after World War I in Central and Southern Europe, but also in many post-colonial African states or the Yugoslav successor states, institutionalised and political hierarchy has been the norm.

Illegitimate practices and international hierarchies

The deeper implication is that no matter how flawed, the international expectations about equality within new states formed on the basis of self-determination have rarely (if at all) been met. After 1919, while the new states failed to meet the expectations attached to the realisation of self-determination, more powerful states and actors regularly used the Minority Treaties to justify hierarchies of status – at times overtly, at other times less so. Self-determination and the Minority Treaties worked as a reminder from the older and more powerful states to the new ones that their status as sovereign equals depended upon meeting certain expectations. Self-determination not only established who could be part of the international society and who could not be. Expectations attached to the principle – and whether these were respected or not – also delineated, ambiguously, who would count as a more legitimate – and thus equal – member in it.

It is here that the role played by the notion of international disciplining gains its full significance. The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘discipline’ as ‘behaviour in accord with rules of conduct; behaviour and order maintained by training and control’. As a verb, ‘to discipline’ is said to signify ‘to bring to a state of order and obedience’, but also to ‘train (someone) to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience’. ¹ Discipline implies a two-sided process: it involves agents who have the authority to set up rules and norms of appropriate behaviour and identity, and agents who are subjected to this authority – whether in the form of outright coercion or mere influence. Historically, rigid standards were sometimes applied, while more flexible rules operated at other times. In line with the varying degrees of disciplining, different degrees of compliance and reward or stigmatisation and penalisation also existed. After World War I, the post-imperial states that did not, or not entirely, conform to international expectations were deemed less equal than, for instance, older, and ‘better behaved’ members of the international system and were thus stigmatised at the LoN.

Research design

This article uses a single historical case study, the expansion of international society after World War I, to lay the foundations for a broader comparative argument on the presence of hierarchies during moments of growth of the international sovereign order. The 20th century was characterised by two other waves of state formation under international supervision: the post-World War II decolonisation process and the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. During each of these waves, new states were formed in the name of self-determination. Notable variations in international expectations, domestic practices and international responses can be identified across these three waves. However, they also present important similarities in terms of the hierarchies at play and the interaction between the domestic and international spheres.

The aftermath of World War I and the 1990s witnessed the inauguration of robust supervisory regimes, while decolonisation involved looser forms of international disciplining. Moreover, the Balkans were one of the regions (if not the principal) under international discussion during two of these three key moments. Domestic practices of hierarchical membership were inaugurated both after 1919 and in the 1990s. It appears that hierarchies were also fostered by the international supervisory regimes. After World War I this happened through the Minority Treaties. In the 1990s it happened through the Legal Opinions of the Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia, also known as Badinter Committee, whereby some groups were granted greater international recognition and rights, over others (Caplan, 2005; Spanu, 2019). In both cases, clearly defined groups of actors delineated the expectations and understandings of self-determination. In the case of the Paris Peace Conference, delegates representing national groups in post-imperial territories were invited to express their views on the creation of new states. However, the actual content of the treaties was only discussed within the so-called Committee on New States, which was formed on the decision of four individuals, all representatives of the Allied powers: French Prime Minister Clémenceau, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Orlando and US President Wilson. Similarly, in the 1990s, despite the formal post-World War II shift towards structural equality, a group of mostly Western states and organisations became actively involved in monitoring the dissolution of Yugoslavia (Caplan, 2005).

Although the post-colonial context presents commonalities with the two other waves, it also manifests significant variations. With the endorsement of Resolution 1514 to terminate colonial rule, the UN General Assembly embedded self-determination in the framework of human rights, thereby globalising the nation-state model (Burke, 2010: 37; Reus-Smit, 2013: 168–169, 192). Territories formerly under colonial rule acquired statehood, following international decision, based on uti possidetis – the principle by which old colonial boundaries became international borders. However, no formal supervisory regime was established because the UN’s official stance was one of non-interference in the domestic affairs of member states, and also, perhaps, because state formation was now occurring outside of Europe. Consequently, while practices of hierarchical membership emerged within many post-colonial states in Africa in particular, these were not directly related to internationally negotiated norms. Nevertheless, the very principle of uti possidetis allowed for greater ethnic tensions to develop internally because – following the imperial powers’ preferences – it privileged territorial boundaries over other criteria of membership (see, inter alia, on this matter: Berman et al., 2004; Burbank and Cooper, 2010; Chazan et al., 1999). Throughout the 1960s, just as in 1919 and 1990, the tension between the equalitarian aspirations of self-determination at the international level and the discriminatory practices associated with it domestically continued to manifest itself.

The framework offered in this article helps to explain the impact of moments of expansion of international society on new states, on the arrangements within international society and on order after empire. I complement existing arguments by focusing on the domestic and international implications for new states formed on the basis of self-determination beyond mere recognition of their statehood. This shift ultimately allows us to move from the usual ‘who is in and who is out’ question to a more nuanced examination of ‘who is where’ within states and within international society as the latter expands. ² Throughout the 20th century, these stratifying dynamics were never more clearly in evidence as in the aftermath of World War I.

By examining the 1919 Paris settlement and its consequences in greater detail, my account will highlight two dimensions that IR scholarship has so far neglected. First, the post-World War I expansion of international society was more hierarchical a process than it appears. We know that international hierarchies persisted outside of Europe after the Paris settlement. Focusing on the new states’ politics of self-determination, however, allows for the identification of a more ambivalent unequal dynamic within the family of nations. Self-determination is largely described as a norm that sits at the equalitarian end of the ‘spectrum’ of global order. Yet, in 1919, it was accompanied by controlling standards in the form of the Minority Treaties. Second, even after the formation of new states in Europe, hierarchies persisted within international society. This was, at least in part, due to norms that were negotiated in Paris, as the new states were being recognised.

The empirical analysis is grounded on a combination of secondary sources and archival material collected at the League of Nations Archives (LNA) in Geneva. It includes verbatim records from relevant meetings, correspondence between national and League’s representatives, petitions, pamphlets and newspaper articles, as well as official documents in several languages. Based on primary research, the next section provides a more nuanced understanding of the post-1919 order to demonstrate that the expansion of international society is bound up with hierarchy.

Self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference

The peace conference that began in Paris in January 1919 was a forum of extended debate. For more than one year, representatives of 29 countries from all over the world discussed the post-war order. Among many other matters, teams of historians, geographers and anthropologists addressed the question of self-determination: who should be granted this right and upon what criteria? From the start of the conference, the colonial powers made clear that they would under no circumstances give up their overseas possessions. For them, the colonies were not yet ready to be granted the right to choose their own government. Unsurprisingly, the line separating those who could enjoy autonomy from those who could not was largely racial. Many of the claims for self-determination that the Great Powers took into account came from European territories formerly under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires.

For months before the end of the war, self-determination had been presented as the solution for world peace. During the first months of the conference, the representatives of the Great Powers largely believed that it would be possible to make the borders of the new states coincide with those of nations. Self-determination, it was thought, would be recognised along the lines of national majorities in the areas concerned. The problem was that none of the peacemakers were truly familiar with either the local distribution of populations or the ethno-national allegiances that the claimants were advocating (House Seymour, 1923: 86). Tracing the frontiers of the new states was made even more complex by the fact that the areas in question had been under the rule of multi-national empires characterised by overlapping membership regimes. ³

It soon became clear that it would be impossible to draw territorial borders along exact lines of nationality (Miller, 1924: 40–44). There were too many populations not identifying, or not identified, with any recognised majorities. National groups would overlap because they could not identify with demarcated territories, while minorities would find themselves in states defined as ethnically exclusive. Self-determination was, in the words of Wilson, ‘the moral principle essential to the achievement of justice and world order’ (Claude, 1955: 11). However, if minorities were to be excluded, the post-war international settlement would be destabilised. ⁴ This unexpected discrepancy had to be overcome by providing guarantees for the minorities within the new states. It was decided that ad hoc treaties needed to be drafted (Miller, 1924: vol. XIII). These treaties would address the states’ borders, the constitution of their political communities and the framing of special norms for minorities. As tools of international disciplining, the treaties would establish what would count as good domestic order within the new states. For the post-imperial states, access to the ‘family of nations’ was made conditional upon ratification of the documents. A special Committee on New States and the Protection of Minorities was created to draft the treaties. Despite the 64 meetings it held throughout 1919, ⁵ the establishment of guarantees covering the treatment of local minorities was a matter of great controversy.

Numerous delegations present at the peace conference, in particular those of the empires’ successor states, were against these treaties. The new states’ delegates sent to negotiate with the special committee were discontented with the peacemakers’ decision that states should give guarantees on the treatment of domestic populations. Were they not sovereign equals, after all? During the drafting of the documents, national delegates made unofficial declarations and sent letters to complain about what they claimed would be a violation of their sovereignty. In the words of Bratiano, president of the Romanian delegation, sharing his position with Kramar, representing the Czechoslovakian delegation, Paderewski from the Polish delegation and Trumbic from the Yugoslav delegation:

If minorities realise that the freedoms that they enjoy are guaranteed to them not by the state to which they belong, but by the protection of an external presence, the foundations of the state will be undermined. ⁶

In spite of their discontent, the signatory states accepted the international nature of their domestic responsibilities as delineated in the treaties, which were all constituted along a similar pattern. In 1919, the treatment of internal populations was turned into an externally dictated condition, not unlike a standard of civilisation that the new states should meet to be recognised as legitimate members of the sovereign order. The treaties defined both the rights and responsibilities that attached to self-determination. These conditions, however, were decided by the more ‘mature’ members of international society. After World War I, just as in the 19th century, access to international society was open to states meeting criteria familiar to and determined by the existing members. The new states’ acceptance of the treaties amounted to a guarantee that they would fulfil the conditions required to become rightful members of the society of states.

The contradicting grounds of the Minority Treaties

Just as the democratic ideals that Wilson and the other European and American peacemakers shared were marred by their hierarchical worldviews, the Minority Treaties that they crafted relied on inequality and stratification. Two issues were particularly salient. First, the treaties professed to promote the norm of equality within polities while enshrining the hierarchical recognition of specific ethnic groups. Second, while the treaties asserted non-interference in the name of states’ sovereign equality, by their very provisions they intruded in domestic affairs. This exposes a tension between the equalitarian conceptions of self-determination and the practices associated with its application, which produced stratifications and exclusions.

The literature on the Minority Treaties is primarily concerned with the minority provisions included in the documents (Claude, 1955; Fink, 1995, 2004). However, the treaties also included clauses on the delineation of political communities. They outlined what the domestic provisions for the allocation of nationality should be. The treaties also stated that all those having the same nationality should be treated equally, and granted the same guarantees of protection and political and civic rights. ⁷ Naturally, the enforcement of these provisions, as much as the criteria for acquisition of national citizenship, would later depend on each state’s practices. Still, although minority clauses had existed before the First World War, no international provision had until then interfered with states’ competence in matters of acquiring or losing citizenship. This constituted a significant novelty. From then on, the treatment and delineation of domestic societies were to be seen, in principle, as matters of international consideration.

The treaties conceived of equality in terms of guarantees that all citizens of a state would have the same political and civil rights. The peacemakers explicitly introduced the idea of domestic political equality (for example, through the acquisition of citizenship via birth or residence) and equality of rights. ⁸ The templates for the treaties all presented the same article on the equality of citizens: ‘All . . . nationals shall be equal before the law and shall enjoy the same civil and political rights without distinction as to race, religion or language’. ⁹ The treaties both ‘provided for protection of all individuals, against discrimination by the states’ and allocated ‘a number of group rights relating to language, education and cultural [and religious] institutions’ (Lake and Reynolds, 2008: 335). The former was a precondition for the latter. While self-determination implied a right to political autonomy and independence, it also involved correlative – and somewhat corrective – responsibilities in the form of a guarantee of equality for all and the recognition of specific rights for specific groups. In theory, all that made sense. In practice, the problem lay in the criteria used for such recognition. Despite available population censuses, the treaties did not recognise all the ethno-religious groups present in the territories of the new states. Acknowledging the rights of certain groups while ignoring those of others gave rise to the problem of the ‘named and unnamed minorities, protected and unprotected people’ (Fink, 2004: 73).

These international distinctions led to the de facto creation of different categories of citizens within the new states (Fink, 2004). This, nevertheless, was not a matter of concern in Paris: when the representatives of the new states signed their respective treaties, they were asked to give assurances that the minority provisions would be integrated into domestic legislation and that minority protection would be viewed as an obligation of international interest, under the guarantee of the League. ¹⁰ The post-imperial states were deemed politically and morally responsible for upholding international standards before international society, but no legal mechanism of enforcement existed. As instituted at the peace conference, self-determination operated in a way not dissimilar to a standard of civilisation – albeit a highly elusive and contradictory one. That this standard bore manifold contradictions was not of too much concern for the peacemakers when the treaties were drafted and ratified. What mattered at the conference was that standards for civilised statehood and membership had been set. How they would work in practice was a different matter. Yet, exclusions and hierarchies in the recognition and allocation of rights and the treatment of domestic groups were frequently established domestically, sometimes in the name of international standards (Fink, 1995, 2004; Weitz, 2008). To some extent, exclusions in the new states followed the lines of old membership categories inherited from the imperial politics of recognition (Spanu, 2019). Moreover, the international recognition of certain minorities over others facilitated the setting up, by state officials, of hierarchical forms of domestic membership.

The case of the Treaty of Saint-Germain for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Minority Treaty of Saint-Germain with the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is a case in point for the peacemakers’ failure to grasp the complexity of the domestic ethnic mosaics. The Yugoslav delegates at the peace conference declared that the Kingdom was composed of one single people – the Yugoslavs – with three names – Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Miller, 1924: 473). Nonetheless, the last 1910 Austro-Hungarian census indicated that there were at least nine different ethnic groups in the region corresponding to the new state. ¹¹ Despite the available information, the treaties did not recognise all the ethno-religious groups.

After extended discussions within the Commission of New States and negotiations with the Kingdom’s delegates, ¹² the peacemakers decided that the minorities to be internationally recognised should be ‘those of specific concern in the Yugoslav region’. What exactly this meant, and how the selection of the four groups that were internationally recognised was made, remains unclear. Whilst the Kingdom was formed on the basis of citizens’ equality, in 1919, the four minority groups to be granted international recognition were the Bulgarians, Austrians, Hungarians and ‘Muslims’ (most probably including Muslims from Bosnia, the Goranis and the Torbesh, although this was not specified). ¹³

The combination of domestic hierarchical conceptions of national membership with contradictory international norms did have serious consequences on domestic discrimination and exclusion (Spanu, 2019). The treaty did not prevent state officials from inaugurating practices of hierarchical membership that favoured specific groups at the expense of others (Kamusella, 2009: 251; Ramet, 2006: 50–51). Discrimination was undertaken against the internationally named minorities, often in the name of international norms, and against other minority groups that had previously enjoyed recognition, but were now unnamed. Some unnamed groups, such as the Albanians (many of whom were Muslims, but who were not recognised as part of that group), were denied citizenship and often deprived of their lands and belongings. ¹⁴ Others, such as the Montenegrins (to whom Wilson had promised self-determination in his Fourteen Points Speech) and the Macedonians, were subsumed in the larger ‘Serbian’ group and were deprived of civic and cultural rights. ¹⁵ Minorities recognised in the treaty were also often discriminated against and not granted equal political representation despite the international provisions. This hierarchical membership showed that the international expectations attached to the treaties had not been respected.

During the 1920s, a large number of petitions from individuals and associations identifying with minority groups were sent to the LoN’s Minority Section. Blurring the view that in 1919 rights were exclusively understood in collective terms, individuals had the internationally recognised right to petition the League against the state in which they lived (Wheatley, 2017). ¹⁶ The problem was that the League left the majority of the petitions it received unanswered. For the minorities and the European rights associations, the League’s silence was generally perceived as international indifference (Fink, 1995: 203–204). Within the League, though, the large number of petitions received did raise concerns.

The representatives of the successor states of the empires, along with other national delegates and members of the LoN, repeatedly claimed that it was ‘inadmissible to see a minority group. . . stand against a member state of the League’. ¹⁷ The problem was that while minority rights had been identified and recognised internationally at the conference, no mention was made of the League’s system for guaranteeing the protection of these rights. Consequently, no enforcement mechanism attached to the Minority Treaties had been set up. Moreover, no general definition of minorities had been accepted. Only two Treaties, Versailles and Little Versailles, offered a definition, with regard to Czechoslovakia and Poland, respectively. They referred to members of minorities as those ‘inhabitants who differ from the majority of the population in race, language or religion’. ¹⁸ Since this definition appeared only in two documents, it could not be generalised to other states. Because of these reasons, as we are about to see, the LoN’s Minority System would not be very effective. Very rarely would direct measures be taken in case of violation of minority rights by states’ authorities.

The minority system and hierarchies at the League of Nations

In 1920, the League decided that minority groups would be allowed to complain against mistreatment. These claims would be received in the form of petitions addressed to the newly formed Minority Section at the League. These petitions would be ‘political’, rather than ‘legal’ documents, to be treated as sources of ‘information only’, unless taken up by a member of the Council of the League, one of the League’s main organs established to settle international disputes. ¹⁹ Because of its contentious nature, the petition system for minorities turned out to be very technical and bureaucratised. Council members would decide whether a complaint bore relevance or not by placing it on its agenda. For this purpose, the Council established the ‘Committee-of-Three’, formed, in each specific instance, by three different Council members. After studying the claim, the three selected members would decide either to dismiss it, to seek informal mediation or to submit the question to the Council itself. ²⁰ However, the states involved in petition complaints had the right to respond while the Committee examined them. This slowed down and often obstructed the matter before the question could reach the Council. If any petition did reach the Council, the latter could decide whether the matter would remain there or be transferred to the Permanent Court of International Justice.

The newly founded Court could issue judgements and advisory opinions, and, albeit rarely, it did so on certain occasions. Between 1922, when the Court was established, and 1939, when the Minority System came to an end, only 16 of the 930 petitions that were filed reached the Court, while the Committee-of-Three deemed that 758 were simply not receivable (Broelman in Tams and Fitzmaurice, 2013: 130). Instead, the whole process of consultation with the involved states was generally not made public. Most often, petitions that were considered receivable would be dealt with through the so-called procédure non-écrite. These were informal, ‘benevolent negotiations’ (Fink, 1995: 200). During these, states not complying with treaty provisions were threatened that matters would go public and be further pursued by the Court if no measure was taken domestically (Fink, 1995: 200). The Minority Treaties represented the standard on which the discussions were based, operating as constant markers of appropriate behaviour for the new states.

The right granted to groups and individuals to petition a body outside the national spheres of authority caused significant protest. The post-imperial states viewed it as unambiguous interference in their domestic jurisdiction. Throughout the 1920s, the representatives of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at the League complained that minorities would be able to report unproven mistreatments. This in turn, they claimed, would discredit the credibility of the Kingdom and its sovereignty. ²¹ However, other members of the Council did not share this view. At the peace conference, the Great Powers had made clear that alongside self-determination, the protection of minority rights was essential for guaranteeing international peace. In the years following the conference, the Minority Section and the League’s Council internalised the same rhetoric.

Many scholars underline that non-interference was by then becoming a prominent norm associated with state sovereignty (Claude, 1955; Fink, 1995). As already discussed by contemporaries, the very bureaucratisation of, and limitations to, the petition process were illustrative of this trend (Heyking, 1924; Roucek, 1929). This argument, however, obscures the fact that the notion of progress associated with the recognition of self-determination claims was accompanied by restrictive practices towards the new states. After all, the Minority Treaties applied standards to the post-imperial states that they needed to attain in order to be deemed legitimate members of international society. At the peace conference, more ‘mature’ states explicitly set such standards of civilised behaviour. The existing literature on the Minority Treaties, however, presents the work of the LoN as if it was detached from these standards.

However, it is unlikely that norms and ideas endorsed just a year or two earlier were just forgotten by the League members. Moreover, many national representatives working at the League had been socialised in similar milieus as those who had worked at the peace conference. This is an important element in the story of the Minority System. Not everyone at the League had the same status. Because of the very functioning of the organisation, the expectations of some states counted for more, within the League’s unequal system, than the post-imperial states’ views (Mazower, 1997: 52–53). In fact, the post-imperial states did not really have a say on the definition of and compliance with standards of statehood and membership in international society. They could communicate their discontent by sending letters to the Minority Section and by taking part in discussions of the Council. However, no one was required to take the new states’ objections into consideration.

The post-imperial states were constantly reminded, through ‘benevolent discussions’ and the petitions received, that their status as equal sovereigns was dependent upon meeting the expectations about appropriate state behaviour. Moreover, the LoN was entitled to send missions to the new states to verify their state of affairs. To be sure, measures would only be taken very rarely, and even then procedures would be technical and slow. The League, however, allowed for the possibility that this could happen. If internationally set standards were not respected, the new states would be reminded, in a manner that mirrored the treatment of Balkan and Latin American states in the 19th century, that their behaviour was not appropriate, not civilised enough. Throughout the 1920s, the possibility of hierarchies of status between new and old states, between more or less civilised ones, was a leitmotif at the League.

Throughout the 19th century, the Great Powers openly upheld standards of civilisation for appropriate behaviour. Now, the whole civilisational idea was mitigated, in some sense, by the LoN taking over the task of setting criteria for legitimate statehood and membership in international society. This did not signify that the idea simply disappeared – it just became more ambiguous. In this regard, it is interesting that to make sense of petitions the Minority Section regularly used the accounts of travellers to the new states. During their journeys through the Balkans, for instance, the British travellers Robert Birkhill and Sir Willoughby Dickinson noted the state of degradation, or, in the words of the former, the ‘enormous deterioration of European civilisation’ that characterised Yugoslavia in the immediate post-war years. ²² This was not very far from pre-1914 prejudices about the region, though Birkhill, for example, concurrently called into question the unequal application of the nationality principle in Central and South-Eastern Europe as set out internationally. ²³

After World War I, the process of expansion of international society was complemented by stratifications of status. As attested by the very existence of the mandate system, explicit hierarchies persisted after 1919. The hierarchies highlighted in this article were more ambiguous because they happened within international society. While after the war, self-determination had become the accepted standard for post-imperial membership in international society, the criteria attached to it would serve as indicators of appropriate conduct throughout the 1920s. By keeping the new states under constant scrutiny, other members of the League, in particular the more ‘mature’ ones, would call into question the sovereign equality of the former at the very moment that membership in international society was being enlarged.