Lost in Translation: Social Identity Theory and the Study of Status in World Politics

Abstract

Chinese and Russian foreign policy, in part, reflects both countries' ambitions for higher status in the international system. This implies a critical question: can accommodating these ambitions prevent, or even reverse, the turn toward geopolitically competitive grand strategies by Moscow and Beijing? In other words, might accommodation lead them to channel their efforts in more benign directions? The dominant framework for analyzing the ways in which states seek status-a framework rooted in the insights of Social Identity Theory (SIT)-suggests that the answer is yes: status-seekers will most likely turn toward geopolitically competitive strategies when they face apparently "impermeable" obstacles to their ambitions. I argue that this framework depends on a "mistranslation" of SIT. Properly translated, the theory tells us little about the consequences of persistent status denial for international politics. Instead, it implies that status-seeking will resolve into geopolitical competition when, first, participants view geopolitically significant resources as markers of status and, second, when leaders believe that they can successfully change the distribution of status. I use analyses of two prominent cases that should prove friendly ground for the conventional translation of SIT-Germany before World War I and Imperial Japan-to demonstrate the serious problems that plague the framework favored by international relations scholars, especially with respect to its central claim about the link between persistent status denial and geopolitical competition.

Internal and external perceptions of small state security: the case of Estonia

“…Perceptions do not form in a vacuum, however; they develop in a social context where existing perceptions meet new information about preconditions, intentions or actual behaviour. This underlines the importance of interaction parameters such as trust (for IR application see Bengtsson 2000, Rathbun 2009, Jasinski 2011, reputation (Mercer 1996, Weisiger and Yarhi-Milo 2015, Crescenzi 2017 and status (Ward 2017, Welch Larson 2018; specifically on small states Wohlforth et al 2017); all of whichin different wayscan be hypothesised to influence the subjective and relational assessment of self and others. As the focus of this article is the relationship between perceptions and policy rather than the dynamics of interaction per se, we focus our interest in perceptions on images and roles rather than on the internal dynamics and formation of trust, reputation and status.…”

Logics of stratified identity management in world politics

“…6 Larson and Shevchenko (2010, 71, 72, 75) and Larson and Shevchenko (2014, Kindle location 1108, 1126. 7 See Ward (2017a) for an overview of recent work that has adopted or been influenced this framework. 8 See Lebow (2016, 1-3) for a discussion of this important distinction.…”

“… 7 See Ward (2017a) for an overview of recent work that has adopted or been influenced this framework.…”

How to challenge an international order: Russian diplomatic practices in multilateral security organisations

“…To be clear, the vast majority of Russia experts acknowledge that Moscow’s motives are mixed, combining both status-seeking and security. Where they differ is in the relative weight of those two motivations: is security the dominating factor, or is it status-seeking (Paul et al, 2014; Ward, 2017a, 2017b; Wohlforth et al, 2017)? This has important consequences, as depending on whether Russia is predominantly a security or a status-seeking state determines which type of engagement is more likely to succeed: if Russia is primarily motivated by security, then finding cooperation mechanisms for alleviating Russian anxieties is possible, from exchanges of information to arms control agreements.…”