The Price of Prestige

116 chapter four

suggests that middle powers are no more prosocial or moral than other

countries but rather that their location in the international hierarchy

constrains their ability to take park in traditional forms of international

status competitions and hence encourages them instead to take park in

contests of beneficence as cheaper prestige policies.

The formation of the Development Aid Committee (DAC) in 1961 is

another example of an attempt to institutionalize a club or a class of ac-

tors.^22 Since only donor countries can become DAC members, the commit-

tee in fact defines the “donors’ club” and thus becomes a venue for express-

ing invidious comparison (Ohlin 1968 ). One of the DAC’s main functions

is the compilation and distribution of information regarding members’ aid

policies. Some of these reports are conducted through peer review, when

two members are assigned to assess the aid policy of a third. One conse-

quence of this structure is the enhancement of the broadcast efficiency of

the aid signal. Thus, the club is an instrument of conspicuousness. DAC

members can rest assured that their most relevant peers are conscious

of their prosociality. It is therefore not surprising that Greece chose to

join the DAC in 1999 to signal its ascendance from aid recipient to aid

provider even though joining the DAC came with significantly increased

obligations (Van der Veen 2002 , 12 n 13 ). Greece’s official development aid

level in 2007 , in relative terms, placed it (together with the United States)

as the least generous member of the DAC.^23 Such low levels are more of a

token, a membership fee, than a substantive commitment to development

aid. In fact, most members fail to reach the DAC’s own benchmark of

0. 7 percent of GDP and instead maintain minimal levels of aid. Critics of

Canadian aid have referred to such tokenism as pinchpenny diplomacy

(Nossal 1999 ). Tokenism of this sort challenges middle- power discourse

regarding their prosocial nature. It is, however, consistent with the con-

spicuous consumption argument. Just as in the case of the Thai carrier,

actors need to spend enough to purchase entry into an exclusive club, in

this case the DAC; once they are admitted they have little incentive to

spend more than the minimum unless they can truly challenge the top-

tiered members of the club.^24

Peacekeeping lacks a formal club but still exhibits patterns of club poli-

tics. Unlike the exclusive DAC, peacekeeping seems to attract a growing

number of contributors. Until 1990 , fifty- two states participated in UN

peacekeeping operations. According to UN data for January 2010 , 115

countries were taking part in ongoing operations. Obviously not all of

these are middle powers. Participation in UN operations is cheap. A coun-

try is considered a participant even if it sends only a handful of troops. As