ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to develop a theory of international social closure to achieve the tasks. It outlines extant social closure theory, drawing from the work of neo-Weberian sociologists Frank Parkin and Raymond Murphy. The chapter discusses a means of classifying how relatively open or closed an exclusion barrier is and provides a means of explaining how exclusion can be achieved in what seems to be an open closure system. It demonstrates how closure can be achieved by group insiders through more than just exclusion strategies and shows how closure and stratification can also be caused by the strategies adopted by outsiders seeking inclusion. The chapter describes the range of strategies available to outsiders seeking inclusion and also demonstrates how the closure game can be relatively peaceful. There are three concepts that form the basis of the theoretical framework: social division, social stratification, and social closure. Closure logics are the criteria according to which inclusion in groups is governed.
