Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers

The rise of China and other great powers raises important questions about the persistence and stability of the 'liberal international order'. This book provides a new perspective on these questions by offering a novel theory of revisionist challenges to international order. It argues that rising powers sometimes seem to face the condition of 'status immobility', which activates social psychological and domestic political forces that push them toward lashing out in protest against status quo rules, norms, and institutions. Ward shows that status immobility theory illuminates important but often-overlooked dynamics that contributed to the most significant revisionist challenges in modern history. The book highlights the importance of status in world politics, and further advances a new understanding of this important concept's role in foreign policy. This book will be of interest to researchers in international politics and security, especially those interested in great power politics, status, power transitions, revisionism, and order.

Introduction; 1. Revisionism, order, and rising powers; 2. Status, foreign policy, and revisionism; 3. 'World power' and revisionism in Wilhelmine Germany; 4. Japan joins the 'community of the damned'; 5. A peace 'incompatible with our honor' – status and the genesis of revisionism in interwar Germany; 6. Status and the Anglo-American power transition; 7. Status, order, and the rise of China; 8. Conclusion; 9. References.

Steven Ward is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, New York. He holds an M.A. in Security Studies and a Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where he won the Harold N. Glassman Award.