Between Deference and Defiance: Hierarchical Status Roles and International Conflict

Abstract

Abstract According to recent international relations research, an actor's status ultimately depends on commonly accepted ratings of that actor's valued attributes (e.g., wealth, competence, culture, or coercive capabilities). This manuscript argues that asymmetric reciprocal roles (leaders versus followers, patrons versus clients, teachers versus students, etc.) constitute another, even more fundamental, kind of stratification that can provoke far more acrimonious status conflicts. Such role-based hierarchies remain stable as long as subordinate actors deem their superiors entitled to deferential treatment. Disputes over asymmetrical roles arise when subaltern actors begin to question the right of dominant actors to command, or when actors fear that co-equal parties are trying to establish their social dominance through a series of faits accomplis. In such circumstances, defiance is the status tactic of choice because it directly undercuts disconcerting patterns of deference. By systematically theorizing defiance in status hierarchies, the paper provides an overdue addition to the literature on the breakdown of cooperation and the dissolution of order. It first sketches a theory that lays out the motives and forms of defiant behavior in international status disputes and then illustrates its value in explaining Russian and Greek resistance to domineering Western “partners.”