Introduction

The rise and decline of hegemonic states remains a central concern of scholars and policy makers. To be sure, most international relations scholars long ago abandoned the quest for a simple causal relationship between the distribution of power and major political phenomena like war and cooperation. But as Robert Gilpin wrote three decades ago, one need not “accept a structural or systems theory approach to international relations such as Waltz’s in order to agree that the distribution of power among the states in a system has a profound impact on state behavior.” Witness the outpouring of commentary and analysis following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent great recession debating the extent and possible effects of American decline. For many, the world seemed to stand before a “Gilpinian moment,” when the basic material underpinnings of the American-led global order were rapidly shifting toward some new as-yet undefined equilibrium.

Gilpin’s War and Change in World Politics posited a conditional but nonetheless general relationship between the distribution of capabilities among major states and the stability of any given interstate order. States, Gilpin argued, use their material capabilities to foster a strategic environment congenial to their interests. If conditions permit, especially capable states thus may seek to create and sustain rough forms of political order over an international system. Gilpin identified a tendency for such hegemonic states to do just that, but, he stressed, no state can expect to lock in a favorable position in the distribution of capabilities. Indeed, tendencies intrinsic to being a hegemonic state will cause the distribution of capabilities to shift away to other actors. As a result, the expected net benefits to rising states of challenging the existing order will increase, causing system instability and potentially a major war reestablishing equilibrium between underlying power and the political order.

Can the international order be modified to incorporate a greater role for rising or more assertive powers such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, and Turkey? While the rise and decline of major powers cannot be forecast with precision, there is scant uncertainty about the core expectation that relative economic and military clout will shift away from the states that created and have upheld the current international order – the United States and its close allies – in favor of states heretofore thought of as outsiders or as minor players in that order. On the surface, accommodating this shift would appear simple: adjust voting rules in international organizations to reflect new distributions of bargaining power, alter spheres of influence to reflect new military capabilities and interests, and allocate new rights and responsibilities as the situation dictates. After all, nuclear-armed major powers, most of which are democratic, are not going to contest global leadership by resorting to arms. Surely the leaders of modern states in a globalized world will not forgo the massive gains of multilateral institutionalized cooperation over some squabble about the shape of the table and who gets to sit at its head.

Or will they? The ongoing scholarly and public discussion reveals a level of anxiety about rising powers and world order that is hard to explain if people only care about economic prosperity and basic national security. Yet most of what political scientists claim to know about the rise and decline of powers rests precisely on that assumption. The discourse on changing power balances mixes concern over pragmatic adjustments of security- and material welfare-maximizing actors with a vaguer apprehension about clashing national claims to greatness and precedence. To an important degree, the worry is about the search for higher status by emerging powers and the conflict this quest may generate with reigning major power actors. Why do rising powers seek status? What are the mechanisms of status adjustment and accommodation and what are the conditions for use of one rather than another? Can the status aspirations of the rising powers be accommodated without violence, and if so, how?

A rising China seeks the status of a great power second to none in a multipolar world. A developing China wants to retain the status of a poor country, a proud member of the Group of 77 (G77), resisting attempts to accord it developed country status. The United States is the “indispensable nation,” the world’s Number One, whose proper role in all global endeavors is that of the leader. Washington is a coequal partner with all other major powers, “leading from behind” and no longer seeking a special role. Which of these stories about status is true? Is a rising China challenging or seeking equality with the United States? Or is the real problem China’s lack of status aspirations and penchant for free riding? And is the United States, for its part, clinging to sole superpower status or desperately seeking to be seen as on par with other great powers? There is evidence for all of these stories because officials in Beijing and Washington send different signals about their status to different audiences at different times, as the situation seems to demand. As a result, the real state of their mutual status politics remains uncertain.

The process of signaling and recognizing status claims is at least as subject to uncertainty and complex strategic incentives as are the security politics with which scholars of international politics are familiar. Some proportion of the conflictual behavior of states may thus derive from their inability to signal status claims. That is, status conflict may occur among states that would be satisfied with their status if only they could obtain an accurate estimate of it. Or, very costly conflict may occur in a system of states whose beliefs about each other’s statuses are only minimally inconsistent. Just as the security dilemma may foster or amplify conflict among states that seek only security, so might a status dilemma create or amplify conflict among states that seek only to maintain their relative standing.