The Price of Prestige

8 chapter one

understanding of prestige is in essence an investigation of social institu-

tions. Indeed, the inclusion of prestige in international relations theory

moves the analysis away from a purely material view of power and inter-

national hierarchy to a more social one.^18 The amount of prestige held by

each group member defines the hierarchy within the society; it is there-

fore an important ordering principle of social stratification. Prestige “is

the relative esteem in which an individual is held in an ordered total sys-

tem of differentiated evaluation” (Parsons 1952 , 131 – 32 ; Wegener 1992 ).

In this hierarchy of prestige, status denotes the ordinal position of actors.

An actor that has higher status enjoys a greater endowment of prestige.^19

Both terms are therefore highly positional. Positional goods are those

in which “one individual’s forward move in the hierarchy can occur only

at the expense of backward moves by others” (Frank 1985 b, 108 ; 1985 a).^20

This is clearly the case for an ordinal concept such as status. The zero-

sum quality of positional goods creates an especially competitive environ-

ment. A social reading of international relations is therefore not neces-

sarily more pacific. In fact, analysts have often connected competition for

prestige with patterns of violence (Rousseau [ 1754 ] 1993 ; Hoffmann 1963 ;

Galtung 1964 ; East 1972 ; Wallace 1971 ; Schweller 1999 ; Wohlforth 2009 ;

Peterson 2002 ).

Thus, adopting a prestige- centric approach generates a hierarchical

reading of international relations. Social hierarchy does not contradict

international relations’ devotion to anarchy: “The international system is

oligarchical (or hierarchic) precisely because it is an anarchic one, wherein

might makes right and differences in power and wealth serve to perpetu-

ate inequality rather than alleviate it” (Schweller 1999 , 42 ). Instead of

viewing anarchy and hierarchy as contradictory opposites, a theory of

prestige forces us to examine the complementary interaction between in-

stitutional anarchy and social hierarchy (Donnelly 2009 : 52 ; Lake 1996 ).

On Pride and Prestige

Why is prestige so desirable? If actors are willing to accept significant

costs in an attempt to secure prestige, then the acquisition of prestige

must provide them with sufficient returns to justify the expense. Yet the

identification and certainly the quantification of these returns is problem-

atic. Part of this difficulty stems from the nature of prestige. Prestige is a

diffused form of power. It rarely operates within the context of a specific

relationship, in a direct and immediate manner. Instead, the influence of