Overview

States do not only strive for wealth and security, but international status too. A burgeoning body of research has documented that states of all sizes spend considerable time, energy, and even blood and treasure when seeking status on the world stage. Yet, for all scholars' success in identifying instances of status seeking, they lack agreement on the nature of the international hierarchies that states are said to compete within. Making sense of this status ambiguity remains the key methodological and theoretical challenge facing status research in international relations scholarship. In The Grammar of Status Competition, Paul David Beaumont tackles this puzzle head on by making a strength out of status' widely acknowledged slipperiness. Given that states, statesmen, and citizens care about and pursue status despite its difficulty to assess, Beaumont argues that we can study international status hierarchies through these actors' attempts to grapple with this same status ambiguity. The book thus redirects inquiry toward the theories of international status (TIS) that governments and citizens themselves produce and use to make sense of their state's position in the world. Advancing a new framework for studying such TIS, the book illuminates how specific theories of international status emerge, solidify, and become contested, and how these processes influence domestic and foreign policy. Showcasing the value of a TIS approach via multiple historical case studies--from nuclear arms control to Norwegian education policy--Beaumont thereby addresses three major puzzles in IR status research: why states compete for status when the international rewards seem ephemeral; how states can escape the zero-sum game associated with quests for positional status; and how status scholars can overcome the methodological problem of disentangling status from other motivations.

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9780197771778

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Reviews

One of the most original and provocative entries on international status-seeking in years, Beaumont's The Grammar of Status Competition is a must-read for any IR scholar who works on status, recognition, or hierarchy. In fact, all IR scholars and students of the international order should read it. * Ayse Zarakol, University of Cambridge * This book provides an original and elegant answer to why states engage in status competitions when rewards are limited and sometimes even illusionary. The book shifts to understanding the construction of status and why studying it in discourse is crucial, as it plays a role in legitimizing the state on both domestic and international fronts, irrespective of the international recognition of status. This masterful argument has wide-ranging implications for how we study international status, identities, and hierarchies. * Rebecca Adler Nissen, University of Copenhagen * In The Grammar of Status Competition, Paul Beaumont persuasively argues that scholars must change the way they study international status competitions, in particular by paying greater attention to the domestic politics of these contests. This theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich, and beautifully written book is required reading for anyone interested in understanding why leaders seem to care so much about something as ephemeral as their country's standing in the world. * Steven Ward, Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Cambridge * This is a path-breaking work for understanding the role of status in international politics. Adopting a critical theoretical approach, the book engages status as a discursive formation central to state legitimation practices. Instead of being something objectively measurable or primarily international in orientation, states are shown to compete * and winin international status competitions of their own making, with international hierarchies invoked for often largely domestic purposes. The book offers a theoretically sophisticated and powerful reading of the 'grammar of status competitions' and of how the discursive and ambiguous nature of status dynamics in international politics is central to political action and subjectivity.Christopher Browning, Reader of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick * In this groundbreaking book, Paul Beaumont demonstrates that much of what we think about how states pursue international status is, at best, incomplete. Departing from the conventional wisdom that status-seeking requires international recognition by others, Beaumont shows that, in fact, states construct and seek status markers themselves, even if no international actor grants this process much attention. Illustrating this highly innovative argument with very diverse, but empirically rich and rigorously researched case studies of the Boer War, Norway's education system, and international nuclear control talks, Beaumont firmly brings domestic politics into the discussion of international status, greatly enriching this scholarship for years to come. * Jelena Subotic, Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University * In this brilliant and provocative book, Paul Beaumont moves the research agenda on states' status-seeking away from international hierarchies and towards domestic politics. Centering the interpretative agency of domestic actors, Beaumont demonstrates that what may appear as 'international' status-seeking may in fact be spatially demarcated and limited to the imagination of domestic governments and other national actors, with little if any relation to international structures or internationally circulating discourses. A must-read for both IR and comparativist scholars with an interest in better understanding the pervasive quest for international status. * Ann E. Towns, Professor of Political Science, University of Gothenburg *

Author Information

Paul David Beaumont is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), working in the Global Order and Diplomacy research group. He holds a PhD in International Environmental Studies and Development and a MSc in IR from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. His research interests include IR theory, hierarchies in world politics, the (dis)functioning of international institutions, global environmental politics, nuclear weapons and disarmament, and interpretivist research-methods. Paul's research investigating the influence of international hierarchies has featured in numerous leading IR journals including European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Third World Quarterly, and International Relations, among others.

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