The Price of Prestige

94 chapter four

giving — a sense of personal satisfaction experienced by the donor (see

also Arrow 1971 ; Andreoni 1995 a, 1995 b).^6

However, because most prosocial policies consume resources and im-

pose significant opportunity costs, helping others may come at the expense

of self- help. The consumption of resources in the name of other- help in

the competitive environment of international politics is, therefore, some-

what puzzling. Analytically, spending precious resources in order to ben-

efit others can be seen as a form of luxury. Normatively, Sir Francis Bacon

famously quipped that there is no excess in charity. In practice, since char-

ity consumes resources, there can be no charity in the absence of excess.

A prosocial actor needs sufficient resources to ensure self- help as well as

enough resources to practice other- help. Prosociality is therefore a signal

of actors’ access to an excess of resources.

When applied empirically, it is not always easy to identify what benefits

prosocial international actors hope to receive or whether such benefits exist

at all. Even more problematic is the assertion that it is not always possible

to identify discernable benefits to the recipients, nullifying the possibility

of vicarious utility. Constructivist models escape the need to identify such

benefits by analyzing prosociality as driven by the logic of appropriateness

(March and Olsen 1998 ; Johnston 2001 ). Prosociality, according to such

analyses, is driven by the internalization of social norms and hence has less

to do with calculations of costs and benefits.

For rationalist accounts the identification of benefits is crucial. Indeed,

most rationalist analysis of prosociality focuses on the search for a robust

model of such benefits. Extending this discussion to international rela-

tions, we should expect states to participate in prosocial endeavors only

when there is a stable mechanism that ensures the provision of positive

payment that balances or outweighs the cost. The existence of a stable

mechanism that provides positive retribution is a necessary component of

any rational model of prosociality. This positive retribution can operate

either directly through material and social benefits or vicariously through

the warm- glow- giving effect.

The most intuitive answer is to view prosociality as providing a col-

lective good. By assisting other group members, the actor is assisting the

group as a whole. Because our actor is also a group member, assisting the

group is in her best interest: instability in one area of the world is a threat

to all members of the system; local conflicts, severe poverty, and extreme

inequality create potential threats and reduce the welfare of the system as

a whole (Sachs 2000 ).^7 This line of argumentation stands at the heart of