Stratification gone awry: system rigidity, agency restraint and tiered membership in intergovernmental organizations

The international state system, like all social systems, is permeated by hierarchical relationships sorting societal members into systems of institutionalized inequality. Recent scholarship has produced an impressive record of the varieties, mechanisms and outcomes of inequality production in international society. Less understood is how hierarchies inside intergovernmental organizations (IGO) become institutionalized, how and why they might change or even collapse. Drawing on recent stratification research in global governance, this article shows how institutionalized inequality through systems of tiered membership can be a highly instable mechanism of hierarchy production under constant pressure for adaptation and de-hierarchization from below. I use the example of a multi-layered system of membership stratification as it emerged over time in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to demonstrate how agency restraint and system rigidity designed into institutional systems of IGO membership can emerge as central drivers for stratification to go awry.