hypotheses on status competition - SSRN papers

HYPOTHESES ON STATUS COMPETITION William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College David C. Kang, University of Southern California

Paper prepared for delivery at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, Canada **Rough Draft: Please do not cite without authors’ permission**

Social status is one of the most important motivators of human behavior, yet for over a generation international relations scholars largely ignored it. Over the past 35 years, no more than half dozen articles have appeared in top U.S. political science journals building on the proposition that the quest for status will affect patterns of inter-state behavior. As Lebow has noted, scholarly research in IR has been framed by overarching grand theories that foreground other motivations, primarily fear (security) and appetite (wealth).1 No middle range theory, no major research program, no major substantive debate has centered on issues of status. Over the same interval, however, research in all other social science disciplines and a variety of other sciences has continued to yield findings that lend compelling support to the importance of status in human affairs.2 Given these

1 2

R. Ned Lebow, Cultural Theory of International Relations (Crambridge, 2008)

For reviews, see Stephen Peter Rosen, War and Human Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Robert H. Frank, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Frank, Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess (New York: Free Press, 1999); Frank, “Positional Externalities Cause Large and Preventable Welfare Losses,” The American Economic Review, 95 (May 2005); Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Pantheon, 1994); and C. Loch, M. Yaziji and C. Langen, “The Fight for the Alpha Position: Channeling Status Competition in Organizations,” European Management Journal 19, (February 2001).

findings, it seems unlikely that adequate explanations of inter-state phenomena can be constructed on the assumption that status motives are unimportant. In recent years, IR scholars have begun to redress this imbalance, but their work has yet to cohere into a defined research program with a well established set of competitive and complementary hypotheses. Scholars seeking to reintegrate the status motivation into IR research work on a variety of different substantive puzzles and operate within different research communities. They operate in the context of a discipline with deep, path dependent resistance to status motivation as a major behavioral driver. As a result, much of the burden of this work is to make the initial case for the importance of status. Our purpose in this paper is to derive from this literature a set of testable hypotheses concerning the links between system properties and the propensity to status-related conflict. We begin by clarifying the core propositions that unite most recent work on status competition and deriving key implications (many of which are not recognized in existing work) that emerge from those propositions. We then derive hypotheses on both the material and the ideational conditions that heighten or dampen status competition. We conclude with suggestions for further work.3

STATUS-SEEKING AND INTER-STATE CONFLICT A review of recent scholarship on status seeking and conflict demonstrates that a rich and often contradictory set of arguments can emerge from a simple, plausible shared set of basic propositions. Core Propositions The following propositions, though often not set forth explicitly, appear to inform most recent work on status competition in international politics: 3

At the panel, we intend to discuss preliminary application of relevant hypotheses to the contemporary cases of China and Russia, their interaction with each other, the US, and their respective regional subsystems.

Kang/Wohlforth, APSA 2009

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Rough Draft: Not for Citation

(1) Informal hierarchies of status recur in world politics, formal anarchy notwithstanding. Such hierarchies have emerged in every international system of which we have knowledge, including the modern European states system.4 The degree to which such hierarchy is recognized and institutionalized varies importantly both within and across systems.5 (2) ‘Status” is a recognized position in a social hierarchy, implying relations of dominance and deference.6 Status implicates such concepts as prestige, esteem, honor, standing, rank, and face. It is socially constructed in that it achieves meaning though collective beliefs and social processes. (3) People prefer high status. While status often brings material reward, people prefer higher status as an end in itself. If the possible payoffs from a game include both material rewards and social status, people will often seek status, under some circumstances accepting substantial trade-offs between status and material rewards. Many writers simply assert this as an assumption; many others ground it in the empirical findings of other social and natural sciences. 7 4

Evan Luard Types of International Society (New York : Free Press, 1976); and War in International Society (London: Tauris, 1986); Charles Doran, Systems in Crisis: New Imperatives of High Politics at Century’s End (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Martin Wight, Systems of States ed. Hedley Bull, (Liecester: Liecester University Press, 1977); Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992). 5

Wight, Systems of States; Luard Types of International Society; Watson, The Evolution of International Society; Nexon, Daniel H., and Thomas Wright. "What’s at Stake in the American Empire Debate?" American Political Science Review 101, no. 2 (2007): 253-277; Lake, David A. "Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations." International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996): 1-33; Lake, David A. "Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations." International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996): 1-33; Kaufman, Stuart, Richard Little, and W. C. Wohlforth, eds. The Balance of Power in World History (London: Palgrave, 2007). 6

Barry O’Neill, Honor, Symbols and War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Lebow, R. Ned. A Cultural Theory of international Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; David Sylvan, Corinne Graff, and Elisabetta Pugliese, “Status and Prestige in International Relations,” unpub. MS, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. 7

K. Fleissbach, et.al., “Social Comparison Affects Reward-Related Brain Activity in the Human Ventral Striatum,” Science 318, (23 November 2007); Robert H. Frank, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Pantheon, 1994); Richard H. Thaler, The Winner’s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life (New York: Free Press, 1992). Kang/Wohlforth, APSA 2009

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(4) Leaders and elites (and sometimes populaces) derive utility from the status of their states. Scholars sometimes provide empirical evidence for this proposition from opinion polls and interviews; many ground this assumption in the social psychological literature and especially social identity theory.8 (5) Status is a positional good, in that its value depends on social comparison: how much one has in relation to others.9 High status is thus inherently scarce, and thus, in comparison to most other valued goods, competitions for status have a higher propensity become zero-sum. (6) Among the great powers in international politics, claims to status cannot be adjudicated by some higher authority. Hence, as contradictory as it sounds to students schooled in neorealism, anarchy generates not only competition for security, but also competition over hierarchy. Generic arguments The basic argument that emerges is that status competition is an important and generally unrecognized cause of inter-state conflict. This general argument is presented in two types of claims: either that realist theories of conflict are right (if for the wrong reasons); or that status politics hold the key to explaining the war-proneness of international systems again for reasons that have little to do with neorealism. A third, very broad 8

Jonathan Mercer, "Anarchy and Identity," International Organization 49 (Spring 1995); Larson, Deborah Welch, and Alexei Shevchenko. "Shortcut to Greatness: The New Thinking and the Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy." International Organization 57, no. 1 (2003): 77-109; Peter Hays Gries, “Social Psychology and the Identity-Conflict Debate: Is a ‘China Threat’ Inevitable?” The European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 11, No. 2 (June 2005), pp. 235-265; William C. Wohlforth, "Unipolarity, Status Competition and Great Power War." World Politics 61, no. 1 (2009): 28-57. 9

Schweller, “Realism and the Present Great-Power System: Growth and Positional Conflict over Scarce Resources,” in Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno., eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 29; Martin Shubik, “Games of Status,” Behavioral Science 16 (1971); Fred Hirsch, The Social Limits to Growth (Harvard University press, 1976); Frank, “Positional Externalities Cause Large and Preventable Welfare Losses,” The American Economic Review, 95 (May 2005).


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implication has thus far received less notice: that status competition dramatically expands the scope of conflictual interactions that IR theory might explain. Realism right—for the wrong reasons. Robert Gilpin’s theory of hegemonic war as well as A.F.K. Organski’s original formulation of power transition theory are explicitly about status—though they treat status as purely instrumental.10 They postulate that as the capabilities of great powers converge, the potential for disequilibrium between power resources and status arises, increasing the likelihood of war. They portray statuscompetition as an underlying cause of great-power wars of transition, and particularly systemic or hegemonic wars, and view those wars as functional precisely because they determine status hierarchy under anarchy. More recently, several scholars have argued that many other signature realist arguments about conflict-generating potential of anarchy either contain implicit assumptions about status-seeking as a key motivation or smuggle status motivations into their operationalization of security-seeking. Markey established the role of prestige/status-seeking in classical realist theory. Much classical realist insight on conflictual nature of politics, he argued, is actually about competition over status rather than security.11 He provides extensive case studies ranging over centuries of international history that yield substantial evidence that the quest for status played an important role in driving states to war. 12 Schweller proposed that because status is inherently scare, even if the international system has changed in ways that reduce the incentives for military conflict over material resources or security, realist theory might still be relevant because status competition might still drive states to war.13 If this is true about the future, it must also be true about the past, which reinforces Markey’s point that much of the conflictual behavior that realists have attributed to security-seeking may in fact derive from status-seeking. 10

War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, 1981); World Politics (Knopf, 1958)

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Markey, Daniel S. "Prestige and the origins of war: Returning to realism's roots." Security Studies 8, no. 4 (1999): 126-172. 12 Markey, Daniel S. "The Prestige Motive in International Relations." Ph. D. diss., Princeton University, 2000. 13

Schweller, “Realism and the Present Great-Power System”


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Wohlforth seeks to establish explicit links between polarity (distribution of capabilities), status competition, and war-proneness of international systems, providing a preliminary review of evidence and mini-case studies that present initial evidence for these relationships.14 Again, the implication is that some portion of the variance in the warproneness of international systems, highlighted in both neorealism and power-transition theory, has to do with the implications of polarity for competition over status as well as security.

Status competition is ubiquitous. Power transitions, polarity shifts, and hegemonic wars are rare. In contrast, the basic propositions spelled out above suggest that status competition may be a weaker but much more pervasive cause of war. Given that there is no reliable mechanism for determining hierarchy under anarchy, military conflict arising from status competition may come into play in a great many specific situations. Statuscompetition, in this view, accounts for some proportion of the costs (arms races, rivalries, small and large wars, foregone gains from cooperation) that states have been willing to bear. There may be many reasons to go to war in any specific case, but when they reckon the costs and benefits of using force, statesmen will consider the status-effects of any decision they make. Much of the history of international relations concerns pushing and jostling over relative rank rather than fateful contests for world leadership or knock-down, drag-out struggles for survival. The underlying issues at stake which complicate interstate cooperation often have less to do with the nature of a given international order than with relative status within that order. All the basic logic by which hegemonic and power-transition theories explain major wars also applies to a whole range of bargaining over relative status among states. Power transitions and systemic wars are thus only part of the story. Historically, the argument goes, status competition may have helped generate conflict in many other familiar circumstances: 14

Wohlforth, “Unipolarity, Status Competition. And Great power War.”


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Attaining status. The absence of higher authority means that procedures for determining status are uncertain and contested. As a consequence, attaining membership in the greatpower club can be a conflictual process. In the post-1600 European states system, for example war against another great-power was, with very few exceptions, a necessary condition of attaining great-power status. Enhancing status. Having attained status as a great power, a state may wish to move up within the ranks. A policy of status enhancement may arise not just during power transitions or hegemonic wars but at any moment when a state concludes its relative capacity to advance status claims has increased. Such conjunctures include perceived power shifts short of a full power transition (e.g., after victory in a small war, defeat of a rival in such a war; a spurt of domestic economic growth, or a rival’s sudden economic decline) or a wide variety of diplomatic openings (e.g., a rival’s domestic crisis or strategic setback). Status might be enhanced by many means short of war against a higher-ranked state: a crisis, a war against a third party, arms procurement, research and development, military doctrinal competition (selecting doctrines that undercut a rival’s status claims), diplomatic interventions, and various foreign policy initiatives designed to underscore a state’s importance, are all ways of moving up within the great power ranks. Maintaining status. On the other side of the bargaining table from status enhancers are likely to be states wishing to forestall any decline within the ranks or, worse, loss of great-power status altogether. To the extent that any relatively small diplomatic or military defeat can translate into reduced status, states may devote seemingly exorbitant resources to ensuring victory in conflicts that are peripheral to their security and prosperity. Status dilemmas. Given that status competition is subject to all the sources of uncertainty with which scholars of international politics are familiar, some proportion of the conflictual behavior of states may derive from their inability to signal status claims. That is, status conflict may occur among states that are relatively satisfied with the status hierarchy. Or, very costly conflict may occur in a system of states with only very minor


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dissatisfaction concerning the status hierarchy, or only a small disjuncture between perceived resources and status. Just as the security dilemma may create or amplify conflict among states that seek only security, so might a “status dilemma” create or amplify conflict among states that seek only to maintain their relative ranking in the hierarchy. The reasons are the two familiar sources of uncertainty with which both scholars and statesmen have to contend. First, states often cannot measure the capabilities or other attributes which underlie status claims. Status claims are backed up by the resources or capacities at a given state’s disposal, but the relationship between specific resources/capacities and status is always contestable. In any bargaining over status, each state faces incentives to highlight the particular resources in which it enjoys a comparative advantage or the particular things it is good at. Frequently, the only way to resolve the issue is through costly tests, including wars. Hence, big wars are frequently viewed as functional precisely because they reduce status ambiguity. But even if we focus on major wars as supposedly the most unambiguous determinants of hierarchies, their deficiencies are readily apparent. Systemic wars often end before the complete defeat of major powers, and, in any case, often do not provide unambiguous tests of the relative power of the states belonging to the victorious coalition. The Napoleonic Wars and World War I left France and Germany in tact and ready to recover. The Napoleonic Wars left untested the relative advantages of British naval and financial power vis-à-vis Russian military capabilities. The same was true of World War II, which yielded ambiguous lessons concerning the relative importance of American sea, air and economic capabilities versus the Soviet Union’s proven conventional military superiority in Eurasia. Hierarchies in international politics are less firmly grounded in unambiguous war outcomes than traditional Gilpinian thinking allows. And, if systemic wars leave a lot of uncertainty in their wake, then surely most other mechanisms states might use to adjudicate conflicting status claims are hardly likely to be much better.


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Second, efforts to communicate claims and expectations regarding status are subject to an extraordinarily complex set of strategic incentives. The problem is not simply that states face incentives to pretend to be different types (e.g., a revisionist pretends to support the status quo) but rather that they face incentives to be more than one type simultaneously (to be revisionist to some audiences, in some regions, or on some issues, and status quo for others). In other words, the incentives are usually for ambiguity. Determining where states really stand may require forcing them to face clear trade-offs and pay costs, which may be an expensive procedure. Randall Schweller argues that revisionist states are necessary to start a security dilemma.15 Our addendum is that the existence and strength of revisionist preferences are usually impossible to identify—not only ex ante but ex post as well. In many circumstances, states face powerful incentives not to clarify their attitudes toward the status quo. Hence, perfectly reliable ex-ante measures of status are impossible. If scholars had ex ante measures of states’ attitude toward the status quo, so would statesmen, and international politics would be much less uncertain than it is. Because of this ambiguity, status competition may generate conflict even in the absence of strong revisionists. As in a security dilemma, actions which one state may take to maintain its status may seem to others to imply an unacceptable claim to status enhancement. The result is ample room for friction in signaling status claims and the resultant bargaining over status. In the worse case, arms racing, crises, and even wars may occur among relatively secure and generally satisfied states. The bottom line is that the politics of attaining, enhancing and maintaining status is ripe for misperception and spiraling dilemmas. And that means that the politics of status competition are likely to be a pervasive cause of tension. Status competition and the stability of international systems. As Larson and Shevchenko and Gries stress, however, the quest for status may also help explain strategic choices that 15

Randall Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security 19:1 (Summer 1994); “Neorealism’s Status Qup Bias: What Secuirty Dilemma?” Security Studies 5: 3 (Spring 1996): 225-258.


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lead to cooperation and peace.16 Under some circumstances, leaders will opt for statusenhancing strategies that do not bring them into conflict with others. According to Larson and Shevchenko, Gorabchev’s new thinking, arguably most responsible for the peaceful ending of the Cold War, was just such a policy. Gries argues that leaders periodically found ways of enhancing self-esteem that avoided confrontations in Sino-US relations. The question is whether there are systemic properties that generally increase the probability that such strategies will be adopted. Lebow ‘s Cultural Theory of International Relations captures one answer. Lebow proposes a novel grand theory building on Plato and Article’s tripartite vision of human psyche, but his focus is making the case for status as key motivator and cause of war. He focuses on the interplay between shared norms of self-restraint and innate human drives for status. Competitive status-seeking worlds are always waiting to break out if not restrained by these reason-based norms. Under certain circumstances, key actors violate these norms in their quest for status, creating a cascade of norm violations by others. The book yields numerous hypotheses (more below), but core argument is that the nature and strength of these norms—not the distribution of power— is the key to explaining why some systems and some epochs are so much bloodier than others. Kang shows how an international system can evolve into a stable status hierarchy in which shared norms channel status drives away from overt conflict.17 The early modern East Asian international system was explicitly hierarchic, and cultural achievement was as important a component of the rank order as was military or economic power. China was the unquestioned hegemon, and ranking derived from cultural achievement and social recognition by other political actors, not from raw size or military or economic power. For example, Korea was seen as a “model” tributary and viewed more highly than Japan, not because it was richer or stronger than Japan, but by virtue of Korea’s more 16

Larson and Shevchenko, “Shortcut to Greatness;” Gries, “Social Psychology and the IdentityConflict Debate.” 17

David C. Kang, “Civilization and State Formation in the Shadow of China,” in Peter Katzenstein, ed., Civilizational Politics in World Affairs (Routledge, forthcoming); and “War and Peace in East Asian History: hierarchy, legitimacy, and order,” (book m.s., University of Southern California, 2009).


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thorough adoption of Confucian ideas.18 All political units in the system played by these rules, and they did not question them. Some states accepted Chinese ideas and civilization, and it was essentially these states that comprised the inner circle that based largely on Confucian ideas. For these states, Chinese civilization provided a common intellectual, linguistic, and normative framework with which to interact and resolve differences. Even political groups that rejected Confucian notions of cultural achievement – such as the nomads – accepted unquestioningly the more basic rules of the game and the way hierarchy was defined, and they defined their own ideals and cultures in opposition to the dominant ideas and institutions of the time. Systemic stability and explicit status norms and ranking seems to have been good for the political regimes in each of these Sinicized East Asian countries which, in comparative perspective, were remarkably long-lived. Tellingly, this was the case even more for the weaker states. The East Asian experience may be the pacific obverse of “imperial overstretch.” Rather than being foolish for relying on bandwagoning and regional diplomatic order rather than constant self-strengthening and displays of resolve and commitment, in retrospect these states appear quite canny.19 Pamela Crossley noted that, “this set of institutional and discursive practices provided a wide range of tools with which to mediate conflict in East Asia.”20

Key Research Challenges From a small set of plausible basic propositions, several important arguments emerge. It is already apparent that these arguments do not only contest the conventional wisdom in the field, but also each other. But the burden of most of this work is to make the case for the overall importance of status as a driver of competitive behavior. In making this case, scholars face five key challenges. 18

Liam Gari Ledyard, “Confucianism and War: the Korean Security Crisis of 1598,” The Journal of Korean Studies 6 (1988-89), pp. 81-119; So-Ja Choi, Myŏngchong sidae chunghan kwanggyesa yŏngu (Study on Sino-Korean Relations during Ming-Qing Periods), (Seoul: Ewha Womans’ University Press, 1997). 19

Thanks to Greg Noble for this point.

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Pamela Crossley, personal communication, February 15, 2008.


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(1) Motives are mixed and interdependent. Higher status may bring wealth and/or security. How can these motives be disentangled? Empirically, the search for instances when direct material benefits contradicts with status concerns is one way to test the extent of status concerns. However, this does not provide an underlying theory for why and when status considerations may trump material concerns. The implicit existing hypothesis is that material concerns take priority over status, and it is only when material considerations are not threatened that states will pursue status. It is quite possibly the other way, however – that security and economic concerns are seen as directly helping a state’s status; and that status is always the most important priority. For example, although coercion can substitute for legitimacy in certain instances and for a short while, they are both intertwined, as well. Legitimacy is stronger when backed by coercive capacity, and coercion seen as legitimate is also more effective.21 As Lake notes, “despite their clear analytic differences, political authority and coercion are hard to distinguish in practice...there is no ‘bright line’ separating these two analytic concepts, and I offer none here.”22 (2) Motives are generally unobservable, and a given behavior may be consistent with many motives. How do we know whether a given action was motivated by status as opposed to other more prosaic desires? (3) Status is an intersubjectively held belief, and as such is hard to measure. How do we know when an actor has achieved a higher rank? Of two states, who is to tell which is the higher ranked? Do we go by what people say publicly or privately? Of is it what states do that matters, rather than what they say? But if behavior is the measure of status, how can status be used to explain behavior?

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Ian Hurd, “Breaking and Making Norms: American Revisionism and Crises of Legitimacy,” International Politics 44 (2007), pp. 194-213, p. 194. 22

David A. Lake, “Escape from the State of Nature: Authority and Hierarchy in World Politics,” International Security 32, No. 1 (2007), pp. 47-79, p. 53.


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(4) Most observed international conflict is already overdetermined by existing theories. If the goal is to explain why states fight, then the analysis is complicated by the overcrowding of competing hypotheses from well established theories. How can one construct a research design to weed out dozens of plausible explanations?

HYPOTHESES Social and biological sciences—not to mention our every day experience— tell us that status is a ubiquitous feature of human social life. It doubtless manifests itself in countless international interactions. Here we are interested in a highly limited subset of those interactions—inter-state conflict. We want to set forth hypotheses on the systemic conditions that might be more or less conducive to status competition. Because most hypotheses on conflict contain empirical implications for non-conflictual international interactions, testing those hypotheses may well call for examining cooperation and peace as much as conflict and war. How we formulate specific hypotheses on status competition depends on whether status plays out as a independent or dependent variable, or as a causal mechanism. That is, the drive for status may be an independent variable that, when present in certain states or systems, tends to produce certain outcomes. What do states do to gain status, and how might their grand strategies differ if states care about status as well as wealth and military power? Can status concerns help explain grand strategic choices? Status can be a dependent variable: when certain independent variables are present, status drives may come to the fore. In many treatments, however, status is portrayed as a causal mechanism—an underlying, unobservable force that generates observable causal effects. Social scientists now broadly agree that causal inference requires identifying causal mechanisms—the actual pathways that connect putative cause and effect.23 Independent 23

David Dessler, "Beyond Correlations: Toward a Causal Theory of War." International Studies Quarterly 35 (1991); James Mahoney, "Beyond Correlational Analysis: Recent Innovations in Theory and Method." Sociological Forum 13, no. 3 (2001): 573-93; Christopher Achen, “Toward a New Political Methodology: Microfoundations and ART,” Annual Review of Political Science 5: 423-50; Bennett, Andrew, and Alexander George. Case Studies and Theory Development. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, Kang/Wohlforth, APSA 2009

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variables such as power, polarity, identity, or domestic institutions may be associated with dependent variables like war or rivalry in part because of the drive for status that animates people. For status competition to occur, one state must anticipate—and another fear—a consequential change in its status. What counts as a “consequential” change is hard to state a priori; it depends on decision-makers’ comparison choices. If a state choose another state or group as relevant comparisons, and if that comparison leaves it unsatisfied, it may take action to resolve that dissatisfaction. If such action is in any way resisted by the other state or states, status competition emerges. Our question is whether there are identifiable and measurable systemic properties that operate to make the initial conditions for status competition more or less likely.

1) Unsettled, ambiguous hierarchies are more prone to status competition. Unclear, ambiguous hierarchies, where actors are unsure of their rank, are more prone to conflict. This general hypothesis is central to power transition and Gilpin’s theories, as well as theories of ethnic conflict, and most sociology.24 Core propositions above stipulate that informal hierarchies recur in international politics and that people are biased in favor of high status. When they experience ambiguous incentives or signals, they tend to resolve that ambiguity in favor of higher rather than lower status. When actors start receiving mixed signals—some indicating that they belong in a higher rank while others reaffirm their present rank—they experience status inconsistency, and face incentives to resolve the uncertainty. When lower ranked actors experience such inconsistency, they will use higher-ranked actors as referents. Since both high and low status actors are biased toward higher status, uncertainty fosters conflict as the same evidence feeds 2005); .Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Prctices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 24

Horowitz, Donald L. Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985); Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1951 [1893]; horsten Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Theory of Institutions rev. ed., (New York: New American Library, 1953 [1899]); R. V. Gould, Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity about Social Rank Breeds Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003 Kang/Wohlforth, APSA 2009

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contradictory expectations and claims.25 It follows that anything that clarifies hierarchies tends to reduce status competition. These can be material or ideational/social. 2) The more that norms and practices can clearly codify status rankings, the less ambiguity there will be about status, and the less status competition. While the preconditions for status competition can still emerge even in the most codified informal status hierarchies, norms and institutions that clarify status rankings reduce uncertainty, status dissonance, and competition. Clarity does not in itself induce satisfaction—a clearly defined subordinate may still resent its position. But the clearer the hierarchy, the weaker the incentives to contest it. If all states know precisely what attributes convey status, then, to the degree that these attributes are easily observable, they will know where they stand. This holds even if norms are warlike, and convey status based on war prowess. One can imagine norms of status that strongly deemphasize overt competition for position, but as a competitive realm, however, international politics is likely to be characterized by contestation over what defines status. Nevertheless, if we accept the proposition that norms and institutions are “sticky,” then rank-clarifying norms may have independent competition-dampening effects. As noted, the degree to which status is codified in rules and norms varies across and within international systems. In this way, much modern status may actually be quite clear – e.g. G-20, “developed nation,” or being a signatory to UN conventions. To the extent that states accept these definitions of status, they will pursue these goals, rather than merely competing with the nearest state. 3) The more the norms of status are hierarchic as opposed to categorical, the more status competition. One key difference may be whether status is hierarchic or categorical. Hierarchic status implies prestige – the most revered or respected state is at the top of the hierarchy, or that only one state can be a “leader.” Indeed, even though the Westphalian system is 25

See, in addition to the sources in preceding note, G. E. Lenski, “Status Crystallization: A NonVertical Dimension of Social Status,” American Sociological Review 19 (1954): 405-13; Johan Galtung, “A Structural Theory of Aggression,” Journal of Peace Research 1 (1964); Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), chs. 6-8.


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comprised of formally equal units, we see substantial hierarchy even today. For example, any mention of “leadership” in international relations is an implicit recognition of this form of hierarchy.26 After all, leadership necessarily implies that there are followers, and also implies that there is a rank order that places leaders above followers. The two are not equal in voice, responsibility, standing, or influence. Leadership implies more responsibility than followers, and also implies that the leader has more right or ability to set the course of action for the future than do followers. Thus, debate about the future of “U.S. leadership,” or questions about Japanese or European leadership, all imply a hierarchy of states. Yet status may be also categorical: formal or clearly articulated and recognized hierarchies determine status, such as membership in selective groups and the rights contained therein. In this case, states do not compete directly for status. As Andrew Hurrell notes, “[some] status is centrally about the legal or political standing of a state as determined by its membership in some class, category, or grouping… a concern with the principles and criteria by which states were able to enter international society and be accepted as sovereign members of the ‘society of states.’”27 That is, any number of countries can be granted status as recognized nation-states in the international system. This is conditional upon a state meeting certain formal and informal criteria; chief among them diplomatic recognition by a significant majority of states already in the system.28 Ranked higher in the modern world than recognition as a legitimate state is membership in formal international bodies such as the UN, the World Bank, the OECD, G20, and the G8. Formal status also manifests itself in leadership positions within these various organizations is also an element of status: leadership or chairmanship of the IMF, World Bank, UN Security Council membership, and other institutions. Adhering to global 26

The question of leadership is prevalent in the international relations literature. See, for example, Kent Calder, “China and Japan’s Simmering Rivalry,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006); Joseph S. Nye, “Transformational Leadership and U.S. Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2006); Robert G. Sutter, “China’s Rise: Implications for U.S. Leadership in Asia,” Policy studies, no. 21 (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center, 2006). 27

Andrew Hurrell, “Rising Powers and the Question of Status in International Society,” paper prepared for the International Studies Association Meetings, New York, NY, February 15-18, 2009, p. 5. 28

Bridget Coggins, “States of Uncertainty: Secession, Recognition and Constitutive Sovereignty," (m.s., Dartmouth College, 2009).


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norms, or being the type of state valued by international society is also an aspect of status, and informal status is given in the various rankings that pervade modern life: corruption indices, human rights measures, and rankings of cultural development. Yet even more informal status is whether a state is a “rogue” state, a “responsible stakeholder,” or a middle power, for example. Such distinctions may affect the likelihood of conflict. Hierarchic status may be more conflictual than categorical status, which is a recognition by other states that one state has achieved or been admitted into a certain class of actors. If status is hierarchic and hence zero-sum, they may compete directly with each other. If status is categorical, states may not compete with each other over status, because the good is divisible.

4) The more different hierarchies of status there are, the less zero-sum status is, and the less status competition there is. States may pursue different types of status; to the extent that they can organize and sort themselves by different criteria, states are less likely to come into direct conflict with each other. This may manifest itself whereby some states decide to gain status through their economic prowess; others through military might; others through cultural achievement; and yet others through their actions as multilateral or responsible members of the international community. To the extent that different hierarchies exist, only in the most extreme of cases will it be necessary for states to challenge each other across different status hierarchies. The potential for multiple hierarchies depends in part on both material and ideational/social factors. The sheer number of states matters—the more there are, the more potential for multiple hierarchies—as does their location—the more regions there are, the more potential for multiple regional hierarchies.

5) Stratified material endowments reduce status competition. Status is a social-psychological phenomenon, yet sociologists from Weber onward have postulated a link between material conditions and the stability of status hierarchies.


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While status cannot be reduced to a material phenomenon, there is connection between the material environment and status politics. When social actors acquire resources, they seek to convert them into something that has more value to them than the mere possession of material things: social status.29 When this conversion process is blocked, tension builds and status hierarchies become unstable.30 Because international society lacks the central authority that allows most domestic societies to regulate the competitive process of translating resources into changed status, the conversion of resources into status is blocked more frequently than in domestic society. Because international politics—especially among great-powers—is a small number system, there may be substantial and consequential variation in the degree to which the distribution of material capabilities and resources is stratified. Highly stratified distributions may foster the clarify that we expect to reduced uncertainty, status dissonance and status competition. In any given period, history and geography may deliver an underlying distribution of resources implies a more or less clear and selfevident hierarchy, and thus more or less vulnerable to status competition.31 Vast inequalities can be stable, so long as they rest on a relatively unambiguous material base. Narrow capabilities gaps thus make status inconsistency more likely. When an actor possesses some attributes of high status but not others, uncertainty and status 29

Thorsten Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Theory of Institutions rev. ed., (New York: New American Library, 1953 [1899]). Thus, we would expect states, like people, to overconsume observable (conspicuous) status-conferring goods. 30

Weber argued that those with wealth would tend in time to acquire status: “Property as such is not always recognized as a status qualification, but in the long run it is, and with extraordinary regularity.” (“Class, Status, Party,” in Bendix and Lipset, eds.) Economic class and social status should correlate in the long run. Building on Weber’s idea, Emile Benoit-Smullyan postulated that if this tendency to conversion of resources to social status is blocked, the resulting disequilibrium will generate revolution. See the discussion in Morris Zeldich, Jr., “Social Status,” in David L. Sills, ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968): 15: 250-256. If industrialization redistributes wealth, class and status hierarchies will be in disequilibrium, and conflict will ensue. The analogies to hierarchical realist theories in international relations are obvious. For an application of Weber’s ideas to world politics, see Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), chs. 6-8. 31

To be sure, it may also hinge on a vast array of cultural, institutional and other “ideational” influences whose importance may well swamp the influence of exogenous material factors. That is an empirical question whose answer requires research on the relation between systemic and material factors and the stability of status hierarchies.


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inconsistency are likely. The more a lower-ranked actor matches the higher ranked group in the key dimensions of status, the more likely it is to conceive an interest in contesting its rank. Under these circumstances, decision makers may frame issues in terms of relative rank, and seek observable evidence to confirm their estimate of their improved position in the hierarchy--for example by publicly winning some concession from a higher ranked state. That state, in turn, given its own bias in favor of high status, may resist. Large gaps separating the capabilities of states reduce uncertainty about the costs of possible conflicts among them, and thus the likelihood that they will be unable to reach negotiated settlements because of disagreement on relative bargaining power in the event of militarized conflict or rivalry. Any first-cut conjecture on status competition is unlikely to generate discrete predictions concerning all levels of all hierarchies, particularly given the great-powers’ strong influence on most local hierarchies. There are three areas, however, where we might expect uncertainty about status to be particularly salient to actors and where actors’ comparison choices are constrained: the top of the hierarchy (concerning primacy); the bottom (concerning whether a state is a great power at all); and the top of local hierarchies (concerning dominance of a regional subsystem). The more the underlying distribution of capabilities yields clarity in these three areas, the more stable (less prone to status inconsistency, dissatisfaction, and conflict over the status quo) the system. This discussion yields two critical metrics for assessing the stratification, which can be expressed as conjectures linking the distribution of capabilities to status competition: Geopolitical stratification. The larger the underlying inequalities among great powers—size, population, natural resource endowments, potential for military power and economic output—and the more these inequalities lead to clear distinctions among ranks, the smaller the likelihood that states will face status dissonance, and the more stable the system. In particular, the hierarchy with be more stable, (i) the greater the gap between the leading state and all other great powers; (ii) the greater the gap between great powers and all other states; and


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(iii) the greater the gap between the leading state in each regional hierarchy and the next contender. Symmetry of resource endowments. The more symmetrically critical capabilities are distributed, the clearer the hierarchy, the lower the uncertainty and status inconsistency, and the more stable the system. Overall, a stable distribution is one in which each superior actor is superior in all relevant kinds of resources. In particular, a given hierarchy will be more stable: (i) to the degree that the leading state leads in all relevant kinds of capabilities; (ii) to the degree that the states at the bottom of the great-power hierarchy lead all non great-powers in all the relevant kinds of capabilities; (iii) to the degree that the great powers atop local hierarchies lead their closest regional rivals in all relevant kinds of capabilities. The ideal stable system would thus comprise one state overwhelmingly preponderant in all relevant capabilities; followed by a group of great powers each obviously inferior to the top dog but each overwhelmingly preponderant in all relevant capabilities in a different, geographically distinct region, and all clearly superior in all relevant respects to all non-great powers. The ideal unstable system would be one in which two or more states are arguably the leaders and they excel in different kinds of capabilities; the potential leaders are very close to the other great powers; where great powers with asymmetrical power portfolios share regional hierarchies; and where the gap between great powers and lesser powers is small. This set of hypotheses subsumes two well-known theories—balance of power and power transition. But it proposes an alternative or supplemental causal mechanism underlying the connection s between the distribution of capabilities and conflict. It also contains many more potential observable implications for interactions other than bids for hegemony or bouts for existential survival.


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6) As a top ranked power becomes uncertain of its status, it is likely to initiate conflict with weak powers. Both material and ideational and social factors might induce such uncertainty. A state may affirm its status as a great power not by fighting another great power, but by winning a war against a smaller power. To challenge a great power is to risk losing a war, but winning a war against a weaker power can reaffirm its great power status. 7) The clearer the status hierarchy, the more states will pursue status independent of its military or economic benefit. When the status hierarchy is ambiguous, states will be unclear about how they rank with each other, how they achieve status, and what actually comprises status. James Fearon notes that is also reasonable to assume that states pursue and satisfy a number of other goals in addition to material power as measured relative to other states.32 This can lead to greater conflict as status compete with each other for status. Furthermore, if status considerations conflict with material considerations, states often take actions that demonstrably privilege their status interests at the expense of their material self-interests. Status-seeking behavior coexists with the goals of material power, and status and material power may often work together as motivations. However, although we may grant that status-seeking behavior exists, when material and status motivations are positively correlated, it will be extremely difficult to theoretically or empirically judge which motivation is prior. Yet there are also times when material and status motivations are at odds with each other, and these instances are potentially the most interesting. When states must choose between competing exigencies that would lead to different or even opposing behaviors, we are able to see whether and to what extent status motivations are present. “G8” membership is not composed of the eight largest economies (Canada and Italy the 13th and 10th largest economies in the world, while India and China have economies 32

James D. Fearon, “Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, and Theories of International Relations,” American Review of Political Science 1 (1998), p. 294.


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larger than France, Germany, Russia, and the U.K.), and there was serious discussion within the U.S. about whether Russia should be “allowed” to be a member of the G8 due to its actions.33 Indeed, decisions about membership involved much more than a mere aggregation of material power capabilities. 8) The greater a power, the more it cares about status. Great powers – those who not only possess the material capability to compete with other great powers but also those who believe they should be great powers – may perceive and value status more highly than smaller states who cannot realistically entertain such ambitions. All states care about status, but small powers may value categorical status – recognition as a member of a group – more than they value hierarchic status such as leadership. Indeed, smaller states may not necessarily believe they should compete with great powers over status as global leaders. The important question is whether they compare themselves to the local or total set of potential competitors. Lesser powers most likely to compete among themselves for status, and only the “biggest of the small” might put themselves against middle or even great powers. For example, the recent visit by former president Bill Clinton to North Korea was all about status – that North Korea was a sovereign state with its own laws and deserving of a visit from a former U.S. president. Indeed, both Taiwan and North Korea have all the basic material requirements for gaining status as a recognized nation-state: they are clearly stable, centralized governments defined over territory, have their own political, economic, and social systems, and control their borders and interact with other countries on a regular basis. Both Taiwan and North Korea are more powerful than many recognized states, such as Sudan or Ethiopia. Yet neither Taiwan nor North Korea exists as a nation-state, and both see diplomatic recognition as one of their most central and enduring goals. 9) The more leaders are socialized domestically into feudal, aristocratic, or other cultures that value status, the more status competition and war there is. Socialization, norms, values, and attitudes of leaders and societies may share similarities 33

Steve Holland, “McCain would exclude Russia from G8 nations,” Reuters, October 15, 2007 (http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1536962020071015).


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across times and systems, but they also may manifest themselves differently and emphasize or elevate different types of behavior, expectations, and attitudes. One way in which this could systematically affect state behavior is the manner in which status is both gained and lost among states. Cultures that clearly value status and standing as important compared to pure material wealth or power would necessarily be more competitive in this arena. Especially if standing can be gained through direct competition, the possibility for more direct competition and conflict would be increased.

CONCLUSION AND FURTHER RESEARCH In this short paper we have attempted to begin moving beyond scholarship that makes the case for status as an important variable, and begun the task of identifying a set of hypotheses related to status that will help to clarify and expand on the ways in which status affects international relations. This task has been necessarily preliminary and tentative, and much more work needs to be done. In particular, exploring status as a variable will require more attention to measurement of status, identifying instrumental variables that might function as proxies for status, and in particular fleshing out the numerous and myriad of ways in which status considerations affect international relations beyond simply great power conflict. There are numerous ways in which status may affect state behavior short of war, and hypothetically all states care about status, although these concerns may manifest themselves in different ways. For example, although great powers may seek primacy or leadership, smaller states may still jockey with each other over relative position, may seek ways in which to enhance their own status through reputation, cooperative or multilateral actions, or through other behavior that does not challenge great powers directly.


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Furthermore, while scholars are accustomed to defining international systems the distribution of capabilities, exploring the propositions developed herein will require further development of other ways to distinguish among systems. Geographical dispersion, the number of powers and potential ranks, and the symmetry of resource endowments are all material factors that may have important implications for status competition but that cannot be captured in popular measures of polarity. Potentially even more important are ways of classifying systems according to the nature and clarity of status norms. Further research in this area could prove quite useful in moving forward the research program on status in international relations.


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