ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the validity of the concept of international anarchy and that hierarchy rather than anarchy appears to characterize contemporary international politics. The term 'hierarchy', which was first coined by a sixth-century Neoplatonic Christian writer, would generally mean 'a social arrangement characterized by stratification' or more specifically, 'an ordering of discrete units which ranks them from superior to inferior'. Generations of analysts had been engaged in asking a variety of questions as to what contributes to social order in domestic as well as world politics. Interdependence and democracy are of course of a wide range. So are their postulated manifestations and the form and extent of their effects. In many cases, interdependence liberals do embrace the notion of interdependence along with the acceptance of some of the basic assumptions and propositions of republican liberals. Realists' charges in their challenge of the 'democratic peace' thesis are in part justified, despite the fact that the thesis has a long philosophical pedigree.
