The Role of Status in Asia-Pacific International Relations
Creators: name: Salmons, Richard Louis
Publisher: name: Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University
Year: 2018
Subjects: status
prestige
perceptions
neoclassical realism
India
China
Japan
international relations
crisis
status crisis
foreign policy analysis

description: International Relations widely assumes that states pursue status, which may provide both emotional and strategic benefits. However, IR’s existing status literature frequently renders the desire for status as a constant that cannot explain varying policy outcomes, and in many cases is overly focused on the connection between status concerns and war. The importance of status as a causal factor in IR may be better understood by considering that if states normally aspire to valued status roles, then threats to those roles can cause states to change policy settings to protect them. States with aspirations to the most prized status roles, notably major power status, should be especially prone to this. This thesis considers three case studies involving major power aspirants, where key foreign policy decisions have been widely attributed to status concerns. As the epicentre of today’s power transition, the Asia-Pacific region is the focus of the empirical analysis. The cases all take place during the immediate post-Cold War period, where the realignment of international polarity threw into question many established status roles. These were: Japan’s 1992-93 bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council; China’s 1996 signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty; and India’s 1998 Pokhran II nuclear tests. The project involved interviews with experts with close knowledge of the cases in each of the three countries, with a view to assessing leadership self-perceptions regarding national status at the moments in question. The thesis outlines a three-phase approach to understanding status concerns and advances the central argument that the middle “status crisis” phase acts as the causal driver of policy change. There is generally a phase of normal status-seeking, during which a state accumulates prestige to win recognition for valued status roles; unexpected events may cause a status crisis, forcing a revaluation of the state’s status position; and the state embarks on a phase of enhanced prestige-building, narrowing and intensifying its status ambitions. In short, changed status perceptions due to a status crisis can cause change to status-seeking policies, which become more provocative or risky than before. The case studies highlight examples of status-seeking involving material power, legitimacy, and institutional roles. The thesis makes two contributions to the literature. First, the argument extends existing theories of status by better operationalising the concept. It adds to social identity theory by explaining the circumstances when states may adopt specific strategies to win status recognition, and it reinforces arguments that efforts to gain status recognition need not be conflictual or disruptive to the status quo. Second, the research enriches our understanding of the historical cases, some of which are mired in long-running debates about causal factors, and it offers ways for IR scholarship to account for the role of status in these episodes. With ongoing power shifts in the Asia-Pacific and beyond, status will continue to be a key concept in IR and this thesis provides us with new ways of understanding the relationship between status concerns and policy change.