Rawi Abdelal
Alexander Cooley offers an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of post-Soviet Central Asia, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the influence of Japanese colonialism on Korean development, the American occupation of Iraq, international monetary integration, tax havens, and credit-rating agencies. Cooley has developed a concise, elegant theoretical lens through which to view a truly astonishing array of international relations.
Valerie Bunce
Alexander Cooley provides not only a comparative analysis of Central Asia during and after state socialism but also his observations about such seemingly disparate subjects as the 'great' empires of the past, the American experience in Iraq, and debates about the Yugoslav wars and Korean political economy. This is as unusual as it is welcome.
Deborah Avant
Using a simple distinction in organizational form, Alexander Cooley explains sweeping variation in political institutions and outcomes. His analysis promises to make an important and controversial contribution to the study of not only empires and states but also global governance more generally.
Mark Beissinger
In a bold thesis applied to a wide variety of contexts, Alexander Cooley argues that the distinction between forms of hierarchy is more important for politics than state actions or ideologies. The result is a work that—challenges traditional categories of political analysis by disaggregating states, empires, and globalization into their constituent hierarchical forms.
David A. Lake
Carrying the new institutional economics forward not only to relations between states but also to issues of state size, form, and type, Logics of Hierarchy is a major contribution to international relations and comparative politics. Alexander Cooley deftly uses organizational theory to illuminate the contemporary restructuring of the post-Soviet political space and beyond.