ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the varieties of hierarchy advocated by Russia, China, Germany, and the United States in Central Asia and the strategies of accommodation and resilience by local states. It provides a novel quantitative index of hierarchy and resilience along Russia's borders featuring an original dataset of security, diplomatic, economic, and informational indicators. The chapter outlines the origins of hierarchy as an outgrowth of literature on revisionism of the international order, its material and normative components, and uses contemporary Central Asia as the relevant empirical example. This use of hierarchy and resilience does not adjudicate the moral appropriateness or legitimacy of great powers seeking to increase influence over other states, nor of other parties engaging in a bargaining process with great powers; it merely assesses how that process has unfolded. The Hierarchy and Resilience Index therefore focuses on the alliance construction and maintenance where hierarchy and resilience most directly and frequently clash.
