Legitimising international orders: The symbolic dimension of surrender

Abstract This article argues that the role of surrender in shaping international legitimacy has been largely overlooked – particularly its symbolic dimension. Challenging dominant views that reduce victory and defeat to moments of rupture, it adopts a long-term, relational perspective, reframing surrender as embedded in ongoing processes that shape and reshape legitimacy over time. It explores how symbols that become central during surrender – including foreign and domestic leaders – can mediate tensions between coercion–consent, pride–stigma, autonomy–dependence, while fostering social cohesion across domestic and international societies. Drawing on case studies, process sociology, complexity theory, the English School, and Thucydides, it demonstrates how the symbolic management of surrender can lead to path dependencies that influence state-formation, a defeated state’s identity, and regional integration. Emphasising the fluidity and political weight of symbolic meanings, it advances a relational understanding of hegemonic legitimacy. In doing so, it links the origins of legitimacy to its continuous development and critiques both simplistic victor’s peace narratives and process-reductive histories. Ultimately, it illuminates not only the challenges but also the symbolic opportunities for constructing legitimacy in an interdependent world – underscoring that power endures through its symbolic anchoring in meaning and, with it, the hope for reconciliation despite defeat.