The Status of Status in World Politics

Abstract

What is status? How does it work? What effects does it tend to have? A new wave of scholarship on status in international relations has converged on a central definition of status, several causal pathways, and the claim that the pursuit of status tends to produce conflict. The authors take stock of the status literature and argue that this convergence is not only a sign of progress, but also an obstacle to it. They find that the consensus definition conceals critical contradictions between standing and membership, that its causal pathways are promising but often in tension with each other, and that the literature may be overlooking the ways in which status can help states avoid conflict and promote cooperation under certain conditions.

Kazakhstan’s Quest for Status: A Secondary State’s Strategy to Shape Its International Image

“…Our case study contradicts much of the literature based on a central argument that Larson and Shevchenko (2003) employ: states that are denied status resort to aggressive behavior. As Macdonald & Parent (2021) also observe (360), much of the literature (Krickovic & Weber, 2018; Murray, 2019; Renshon, 2017; Ward, 2017) presents status-seeking states as destabilizing the international system (360) and, they conclude, scholars “neglect the ways in which status can defuse conflict and promote cooperation (383).” In support of their conclusion, the case of Kazakhstan illustrates that status-seeking does not require competitive behavior and that such pursuits can have positive outcomes for regional and global cooperation. Of the three main ways that states seek status (via creativity, mobility, and competition), Astana has mostly embraced a social creativity agenda but also pursues a social mobility strategy, when the preferences of major Western powers are not a threat to the regime’s political survival.…”

Introduction - collapsed system: rethinking world disorder

“…Russia and China vie to reassert lost status in the great power vacuum; historic rimland states lead among others in pursuing imperial status from past eras today. There is some good work done on dealing with the status problem (Paul et al 2014;Hampson & Troitskiy 2017;MacDonald & Parent 2021), but much more needs examination in conducts and counters, as repeated new examples appear. Further work on the power cycle may be helpful (Doran 2000).…”

International Status Concerns and Domestic Support for Political Leaders

“…We reverse this notion by asking how the international status of a country affects its domestic politics. This follows recent calls to better incorporate “survey experiments of public opinion to identify scope conditions for domestic pressure” in the context of status‐based arguments (MacDonald and Parent 2021, 384, 385). We argue that when foreign policy crises resolve in a way that has negative implications for a state's status, the public will appreciate this and withdraw support for the incumbent political leader.…”