Status conflicts between Russia and the West: Perceptions and emotional biases

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis article looks at the status conflicts between Russia and the West and asks: why do these conflicts exist despite attempts to avoid them? If status conflicts refer to merely a symbolic recognition, then they should arguably be easier to solve than conflicts stemming from competition for power and resources. Yet, status conflicts can be difficult to solve even when they were not conceived as zero-sum games. The article argues that status conflicts cannot be understood without the interplay of perceptions and emotions. First, what really matters is not objective status but perceptions thereof and there seems to be a gap how Russia and the West perceive status in general. Secondly, the perceptions of when status is gained or lost seem to be emotionally loaded. Russia is more willing to understand its relative status when military or economic issues are at stake, but if the dispute deals with international norms and questions of justice Russia is more likely to interpret Western action as violating its status and conversely, it is more likely to interpret its own action as enhancing its status when it is defending such values differently from the West.

The demand for defense spending in Russia: Economic and strategic determinants

“…Hence, they will tend to cause increases in the defense budget of the given state in an effort to purchase more security. For instance, in the case of Russia, the USA can be construed as an antagonistic power in the global arena (Forsberg, 2014;Cooper, 2016). Including the estimations that follow US military spending will help to empirically trace one of the strategic considerations that may influence the allocation of resources to defense by Russia.…”

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

“…Of the twenty-seven articles about status in international relations that have appeared since the beginning of 2014, eight explicitly use SIT as their primary explanatory framework (Larson and Shevchenko 2014b;Clunan 2014;Malinova 2014;Miller et al 2015;Bezerra et al 2015;Evans 2015;Sambanis et al 2015;Lee 2016); two consider but reject it as an explanatory framework (Renshon 2016;Barnhart 2016). Of the eight pieces that adopt SIT, seven use the Larson and Shevchenko 3 On the significance of status for Chinese foreign policy, see Deng (2008) and Wolf (2014a); on Russian foreign policy, see Clunan (2009Clunan ( , 2014, Forsberg (2014), Heller (2014), Malinova (2014), and Tsygankov (2012 translation. Both of the pieces that explicitly consider and reject SIT as an alternative framework cite the Larson and Shevchenko translation as the conventional application of SIT to the study of status in international relations.…”

Towards conflict or cooperation? The Ukraine crisis and EU-Russia relations

“…In the absence of a coherent strategic partnership, Russia 6 accepted only proposals from the EU that suited its interests. Moscow pursued the idea of a strategic partnership only as long as it viewed it as a prerequisite for being recognised as a great power (Forsberg 2014). As a consequence, when the Ukraine crisis erupted both the EU and Russia abandoned almost entirely investing the strategic partnership (European Parliament 2015).…”

“…Both the EU and Russia have been motivated to spread their influence in the post-Soviet space primarily by the need to preserve or enhance their status in the international arena (Forsberg 2014;Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth 2014). The collision of their subsequent efforts has led to a geopolitical tension in EU-Russia relations.…”