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Linking Status with Soft Power: Call for a Joint Research Agenda
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"Its vast energy resources ... have the potential to make Russia a different kind of power in the twenty-first century from what it was in the twentieth...."
Who or what is a normative power? In response to this query the article suggests that normative powers are those actors that are recognized as such by others. This qualifies Ian Manners’s oft-quoted proposition that normative powers are only those actors that have the ability to ‘shape what can be “normal” in international life’. The proposition is that the definitions of the ‘normal’ are not merely undertaken by normative power, but they emerge in the context of its interaction with others. Recognition, in this setting, is indicated by the specific reactions of target states. In this respect, the issue is not merely about being and becoming a normative power, but also about being recognized as one by others. The article details this proposition through a parallel assessment of normative power Europe and normative power China. The intention of such comparison is to elicit the key elements of normative power in global life.
Automated event data extraction techniques have revolutionized the study of conflict dynamics through the ability of these techniques to generate large volumes of timely data measuring dynamic interactions among actors around the world. In this paper, we describe our approach for adapting these techniques to extract data on sentiments and emotions, which are theorized to crucially contribute to escalating and de-escalating conflict. Political scientists view political conflict as resulting from a series of strategic interactions between groups and individuals. Psychologists highlight additional factors in political conflict, such as endorsements and condemnations, the public's attitude toward its leaders, the impact of public attitudes on policy, and decisions to engage in armed conflict. This project combines these two approaches to examine hypotheses regarding the effects that different emotional impulses have on government and dissident decisions to escalate or de-escalate their use of hostility and violence. Across the two cases examined-the democratic Philippines and authoritative Egypt between 2001 and 2012-we found consistent evidence that intense societal fear of dissidents and societal disgust toward the government were associated with increases in dissident hostility. Conversely, societal anger toward dissidents was associated with a reduction in dissident hostility. However, we also found noticeable differences between the two regimes. We close the article with a summary of these similarities and differences, along with an assessment of their implications for future conflict studies.
Rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and Turkey are increasingly claiming heightened profiles in international politics. Although differing in other respects, rising states have a strong desire for recognition and respect. This pioneering volume on status features contributions that develop propositions on status concerns and illustrate them with case studies and aggregate data analysis. Four cases are examined in depth: the United States how it accommodates rising powers through hierarchy), Russia (the influence of status concerns on its foreign policy), China (how Beijing signals its status aspirations), and India (which has long sought major power status). The authors analyze status from a variety of theoretical perspectives and tackle questions such as: How do states signal their status claims? How are such signals perceived by the leading states? Will these status concerns lead to conflict, or is peaceful adjustment possible?
International Relations scholars concerned with explaining status-seeking behavior in the international system draw heavily from social comparison theory and its observations that individuals judge their worth, and accordingly derive self-esteem, through social comparisons with others. According to this logic, states become status seekers because, like individuals, they have an innate desire for favorable social status comparisons relative to their peers. Thus, the great power status literature is often framed in the language of accommodation, and adjustment, which presupposes that status insecurities develop from unfavorable social comparisons and can be resolved through relative social improvements. This article challenges these assumptions by noting, as psychology has acknowledged for some time, that individuals use both social and temporal forms of comparison when engaging in self-evaluation. Where social comparisons cause actors to ask “How do I rank relative to my peers?” temporal comparisons cause actors to evaluate how they have improved or declined over time. This article advances a temporal comparison theory of status-seeking behavior, suggesting that many of the signaling problems associated with status insecurity emerge from basic differences in how states evaluate their status, and whether they privilege temporal over social comparisons. The implications are explored through China’s contemporary struggle for status recognition, situating this struggle within the context of China’s civilizational past and ongoing dispute over Taiwan.
What is soft power, and how can we analyse it empirically? The article proposes a social constructivist take on soft power by anchoring it to the concept of collective identity, and by suggesting a set of criteria that can be used to assess whether soft power is present in a relationship between two or more states. It argues that soft power is generated through continuous renegotiation of collective identity. We can assess the weight of a state’s soft power vis-a-vis another state by investigating the extent to which the discursively constructed collective identity projected by the first state is accepted or rejected by different audiences in the second state, and by examining the ability of these audiences to affect the process of foreign policy decision-making. To illustrate this approach, the article applies it to an analysis of Russia’s relationship with Ukraine prior to the 2014 crisis. In the late 2000s–early 2010s, Russia’s dominant identity was increasingly associated with the idea of a ‘Russian world’ — an imagined community based on the markers of the Russian language, the Russian culture and the common glorious past. Despite a significant increase in Moscow’s public diplomacy activities in Ukraine around that time, those efforts did not and could not fundamentally transform the psychological milieu in Moscow’s relationship with Kyiv because the projected identity was inherently incompatible with one of the main identity discourses in Ukraine and was only partially compatible with another.
This article looks at the status conflicts between Russia and the West and asks: why do these conflicts exist despite attempts to avoid them? If status conflicts refer to merely a symbolic recognition, then they should arguably be easier to solve than conflicts stemming from competition for power and resources. Yet, status conflicts can be difficult to solve even when they were not conceived as zero-sum games. The article argues that status conflicts cannot be understood without the interplay of perceptions and emotions. First, what really matters is not objective status but perceptions thereof and there seems to be a gap how Russia and the West perceive status in general. Secondly, the perceptions of when status is gained or lost seem to be emotionally loaded. Russia is more willing to understand its relative status when military or economic issues are at stake, but if the dispute deals with international norms and questions of justice Russia is more likely to interpret Western action as violating its status and conversely, it is more likely to interpret its own action as enhancing its status when it is defending such values differently from the West. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Regents of the University of California.
Since China’s implementation of the Confucius Institute (CI) project in 2004, most academic works have been written on its objectives, nature, features, development, problems and challenges, especially in terms of soft power projection. Though some of them could unravel the tensions and paradoxes in the CI project, there is a paucity of in-depth and focused analysis on the related issues with a more systematic framework. Utilising Tellis et al.’s tripartite taxonomy approach to power - resources, strategies and outcomes - and integrating it with Nye’s tripartite approach to exercising power - coercion, inducement and attraction - this paper aims to fill this research gap. The findings can shed light on the tensions and paradoxes in China’s development of soft power by providing a more systematic and integrated framework for analysing the dilemmas and predicaments in the exercise of its power strategies in the global age.
Economic convergence of the large emerging economies (Brazil, China and India) on the incumbent industrialized economic powers has produced divergent predictions: rising powers are viewed as challengers of existing global governance or nascent supporters of the status quo. The preferences of rising powers, as revealed in global economic negotiations and international security regimes, indicate that they are moderate reformers that seek greater influence within existing forums and also attempt to safeguard their policy-making autonomy. Even if their preferences change, the translation of growing economic weight into usable capabilities is not automatic. Domestic political constraints often make the mobilization of capabilities difficult in international bargaining. Strategies of collective action, whether South—South or regional, have not yet produced a consistent increase in bargaining power at the global level. The counter-strategies of delay and cooptation implemented by the incumbent powers have maintained incumbent influence and enhanced the legitimacy of existing global governance institutions. Risks of conflict remain along three negotiating divides: system friction, distributional conflict and institutional efficiency. Institutional innovations such as greater transparency, institutional flexibility and construction of informal transnational networks may provide modest insurance against a weakening of global governance and its institutions.
This article examines Chinese and Russian foreign policy and military strategy from the theoretical standpoint of soft balancing. Analysis of their thinking indicates that both seek to offset US military superiority without engaging American power directly. To that end, Chinese and Russian strategists have adopted ‘soft’ or ‘normative’ power assets as strategic capabilities in their military and foreign policy. Alternative norms, such as the concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, allow China and Russia to deliberately ignore human rights issues in order to achieve diplomatic advantage with respect to the United States. The two powers have institutionalized these norms within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which they use to counterbalance US interests in Central Asia.
In current analysis and debate concerning China's rise, the subject of soft power is either missing or misapplied. Since the 1990s, China has achieved impressive gains both in terms of soft power resources and the ability to convert the resources into desired foreign-policy outcomes. Unlike the former Soviet Union, China appears to be more successful in developing hard and soft power in tandem. Its steppedup endeavours in expanding its soft power nevertheless continue to be constrained by three factors: imbalance in resources, legitimacy concerns regarding its diplomacy, and a lack of coherent agenda. How Washington and its allies respond to this unique power pattern will shape the future strategic landscape of East Asia and beyond.
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