The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations

Abstract

How can established powers manage the peaceful rise of new great powers? With The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations, the author offers a new answer to this perennial question in international relations, arguing that power transitions are principally social phenomena whereby rising powers struggle to obtain recognition of their identity as a great power. At the center of great power identity formation is the acquisition of particular symbolic capabilities—such as battlesheips, aircraft carriers, or nuclear weapons—that are representative of great power status and that allow rising powers to experience their uncertain social status as a brute fact. When a rising power is recognized, this power acquisition is considered legitimate and its status in the international order secured, leading to a peaceful power transition. If a rising power is misrecognized, its assertive foreign policy is perceived to be for revisionist purposes, which must be contained by the established powers. Revisionism—rather than the product of a material power structure that encourages aggression or domestic political struggles—is a social construct that emerges through a rising power’s social interactions with the established powers as it attempts to gain recognition of its identity. The question of peaceful power transition has taken on increased salience in recent years with the emergence of China as an economic and military rival of the United States. Highlighting the social dynamics of power transitions, this book offers a powerful new framework through which to understand the rise of China and how the United States can facilitate its peaceful rise.

Dispute inflation

“…Insecurities and frustrations encoded within fragile collective discourses of state identity -highlighted in the constructivist literature on ontological security -are another (Gustafsson and Krickel-Choi, 2020;Kinnvall and Mitzen, 2020;Zarakol, 2010). Similarly, diffuse status concerns -also the focus of an extensive literature in International Relations (Murray, 2019;Paul et al, 2014) -may further give rise to significant anxieties.…”

“…While the relevant literature is too vast to do justice here (Tammen et al, 2021), the simple point is that like spirals, power shifts do not occur in a discursive or emotional vacuum. Shifting power relations can be unsettling, giving rise to emotionally salient discourses of self-doubt, jealousy, or anxiety (Hagström, 2021;Onea, 2014) in the declining power, and 'unhappiness and resentment' (Paul, 2017) in the rising one, particularly where it does not feel sufficiently accommodated or recognised (Murray, 2019) -all affective climates highly conducive to inflationary projection. Moreover, states facing the uncertainties of shifting balances of power may particularly obsess over their reputation, prestige, or status (Larson and Shevchenko, 2010), becoming increasingly likely to engage in extrapolation and abstraction.…”

La política exterior rusa pos Guerra Fría. ¿Caso paradigmático de revisionismo?

“…Sin embargo, este proceso implica una gran incertidumbre para el Estado en cuestión -siempre existe el riesgo de no obtener este reconocimiento tan necesario-, más aún en un contexto de anarquía sistémica. Una forma de tratar de superar esta inseguridad social, según Murray (2019), consiste en realizar prácticas de reconocimiento, es decir gestos asociados con la identidad de una gran potencia, no exentos de riesgo y que pueden ser agrupados en tres grupos. Primero, existe la posibilidad de hablar con la voz de una gran potencia para así obtener respeto, al asumir responsabilidades de gestión, reclamar un asiento en la mesa o hasta instigar crisis internacionales para llamar la atención de las grandes potencias.…”

“…El presente artículo se propone problematizar esta afirmación al postular que la categoría del revisionismo no constituye una proyección internacional unidimensional, ni tampoco objetiva. Por otro lado, siguiendo a Murray (2019), el revisionismo, además de emerger al interior de un Estado, también se construye a través de las interacciones sociales con otros Estados, como efecto de su pugna por el reconocimiento. Luego de una revisión de la literatura sobre dicho concepto y la ubicación de la teoría de Murray en ella, el presente artículo indaga en los motivos y las estrategias de Rusia en el orden pos Guerra Fría, así como las capacidades que sustentan su política exterior.…”

Repertoires of statecraft: instruments and logics of power politics

“…Project Apollo, for example, was designed to enhance American status, 21 as was Wilhelmine Germany's demand for battleships. 22 Symbolic instruments of statecraft include propaganda, ideological persuasion, and so forth.…”