The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical analysis of the conditions affecting the emergence of a great power concert, in order to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. In contrast to some recent important theoretical works which underline the role of various systemic factors in the formation of a concert, I will argue that it is unit-level factors that make the difference with regard to great power concerts. The article will also provide historical illustrations for the influence of the explanatory factors on the emergence or non-emergence of concerts. The only historical case of a great power concert to date is the nineteenth-century European Concert. Comparisons will be made between this period and the Cold War, when a great power concert manifestly did not take place.

Throughout the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s the academic discipline of international relations has witnessed a prolonged period of intense intellectual ferment about the contemporary identity of the field. The significance of this academic controversy is evidenced by the designation that it most fundamentally represents the discipline's third ‘Great Debate’. The importance of the third debate to a field characteristically immune from meta-theoretical self-reflection has been aptly acknowledged by those who recognize the changed nature of philosophical and theoretical inquiry in the post-positivist age. The variety of contending classifications that have been put forth to elucidate the overall character of the third debate is but another indication of the considerable importance that scholars have attached to the outcome of this dispute as we approach the next millennium.

During the postwar era, much scholarship was concerned with understanding the causes of the Cold War and with identifying ways in which East—West tensions might be reduced. Since the 1980s, however, an increasing number of analysts have chosen to characterize the years following World War II as a ‘Long Peace’, during which, contrary to many fears and expectations, a major war never occurred. Rather than focusing on the sources of hostility between the leading powers of the period, these scholars have sought to explain how military conflict between them was avoided for an extended length of time.

Much of the work that has been done by feminist International Relations (IR) theorists thus far has been to critique the existing discipline for its obvious inattention to questions of women and gender. It is time now to turn to more substantive work and explore not only the ways in which gender is absent from the study of international relations, but to document also the ways in which gender informs the various institutions and practices of international relations. To this end, feminist analyses of political economy, militarism, state-building, diplomacy and so on have begun to emerge. The present study is part of this project and seeks to develop an account of gender and international organizations and then apply it to an illustrative study of the International Labour Organization (ILO).