On the Social Status of the European Union

Abstract

In this article I analyse the EU's social status in world politics. I argue that recognition grants the EU both club and positional status. Drawing on existing literature on status in international relations, I conceptualize the diplomatic corps of various polities as the embodied recognition of their positional status in world politics. To indicate and measure the positional status of the EU, I applied social network analysis to data on the exchange of embassies from 1960 to 2010. This methodology allows for consistent longitudinal comparisons of standing between heterogeneous polities in world politics. The results indicate that the EU's rise in the status hierarchy has been meteoric since 1960. However, fear of status congestion and status dilution among countries has thwarted the EU's full inclusion into the various status clubs of nation-states. I show that due to its lack of full club status the EU struggles to convert its high positional status into influence.

A preliminary study of science diplomacy networks in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

“…The choice to focus on economic resources is consistent with the acknowledgement by international relations and international political sociology scholarship that diplomatic activities and initiatives are resource-constrained, stating the existence of a positive relation between resources, power, and influence (Hafner-Burton et al, 2009). National economic output as measured by GDP represents a pragmatic choice to begin an exploration of this aspect and to examine whether material resources either affect or are affected by network characteristics, so that international actors can either over-perform (Baxter et al, 2018) or underperform their status (Røren and Beaumont, 2019), or fail to translate their position into influence (Røren, 2020). The application of SNA offers the opportunity to apply these broader insights to SD, adding to our understanding of the collaborations in this field not only as the result of national actors' attributes, but also of their positions and connections in cooperation networks.…”

King in the North: evaluating the status recognition and performance of the Scandinavian countries

“…15 Here, status clubs are conceptualized as 'social structures of distinction that excludes and includes actors based on the club's own standards and in turn grants privileges and bestows duties upon its members'. 16 Here, the competition and cooperation for status is heavily geared toward the other Scandinavian states. 17 Moreover, Scandinavian status builds on welfare state values, most prominently egalitarianism, peaceful conflict resolution, rule of law, and collectivism, which serve (or at least are seen as serving) as the point of departure for Scandinavian policy-making at home and abroad to the extent that they constitute a 'Scandinavian international society'.…”