The Price of Prestige

164 chapter six

maximizers. Similarly, extravagant acts that lead to a counterproductive

Gatsby effect, such as the purchase of the Thai aircraft carrier, cannot be

easily explained as acts of welfare maximization. It is this shift from the

material to the social, from power to prestige, that allows for the possibility

of nuance and change.

Realism can provide a partial explanation for only two of the four

main elements of conspicuous consumption that were identified at the

beginning of this study. While deterrence theory can partially account for

the preference for conspicuousness, and while some variants of realism

acknowledge the importance of hierarchy, realists cannot adequately ex-

plain the attractiveness of costly goods or the cyclical nature of status sym-

bols. Deterrence theory cannot explain the persistent attraction of extrav-

agant showpieces and suboptimal policies: a world populated by power

maximizers, conventionally understood, cannot account for conspicuous

consumption.

By portraying actors as prestige maximizers, conspicuous consump-

tion theory generates a realist- constructivist hybrid.^4 It retains realism’s

assertions regarding the competitive nature of international relations but,

through the shift from power to prestige, suggests that the form in which

this competition takes place is socially constructed and thus open to

change. All three cases described in this book provide examples of com-

petitive behavior in search of prestige in international relations. Yet com-

petition in these examples is not necessarily violent. In fact, in two of the

three cases competition may lead to positive collaborative outcomes. In

the case of prosociality, competition provides an important motivation

for other- help and generates contests of beneficence. In the case of Big

Science, competition helps actors overcome the collective action problem

and muster the required political capital to fund large- scale scientific proj-

ects. The big theoretical challenge here is to understand the process that

leads actors to enact their competitive urges through one venue rather

than another. Can we envision the process through which violent compe-

tition gives way to more benign contests? Further research is needed in

order to provide an answer to this question.

The Next Step

Future research on conspicuous consumption will likely go beyond the

modest empirical goals of this study. However, any substantial advance