The Price of Prestige

108 chapter four

in times of need. In a similar way even weaker actors can try to gain prestige

by refusing help or by offering help to the needier. Turning down assistance

is a way of establishing an actor’s ability to resist the dominance of the do-

nor. In times of great need, refusing help is conspicuous and costly; in a way

it is a striking form of voluntary handicap. In the perfectly material and

apolitical world of market exchange, we should never observe an actor snub

an offer of free benefits. Voluntary deprivation makes sense only within the

context of gift economy.

Mauss notes that in many archaic societies, refusing a gift could lead to

war. Only those on the top end of the social hierarchy are usually strong

enough to be able to reject a present and force the other actor to chal-

lenge them to a conflict or accept defeat (Mauss 1990 , 41 ). Again, a model

that ignores power and prestige cannot account for these patterns and

thus misses an important dimension of the politics of prosociality. This is

especially true when applied to international relations, a field which is of-

ten depicted as dominated to the point of obsession with power relations

and relative gains (Mearsheimer 2001 ; Waltz 1979 ; Brooks 1997 ; Powell

1991 , 1994 ; Snidal 1991 ).

Hence, it is not surprising that the United States refused to accept al-

most all offers of search-and-rescue assistance following the September 11

attacks and was very reluctant to accept aid in the aftermath of Hurricane

Katrina. On the other end of the scale, we can find Zimbabwe’s Mugabe

refusing much-needed food assistance for his starving population, offi-

cially due to concerns over genetically modified organisms, or North Ko-

rea’s initial rejection of food aid because of concerns regarding mad cow

disease. In 1992 , Indonesia announced that it will no longer accept Dutch

aid because with it came too much intervention in its domestic affairs (Van

der Veen 2000 , 227 ). Through this unusual and costly act, Indonesia was

striving to improve its position in power relations with its former colonial

ruler. Conversely, some African states tried to utilize their contribution

to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake as a prestige policy, signaling their

shift from recipients to donors.

As the Indonesian- Dutch case demonstrates, prosociality rarely comes

without some exertion of control over the recipient. In international re-

lations this is often institutionalized explicitly through aid conditionali-

ties. While aid conditionalities are rarely enforced, they serve as an ex-

plicit reminder of the power relation between the donor and the recipient

(Kosack and Tobin 2006 ). This exertion of control is a natural outcome

of a prosocial act. The act of giving serves as a signal that institutionalizes