Status Dissatisfaction, Social Undermining and Chinese Efforts for Equality

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries & Foreign Policy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Foreign Policy

Abstract

The scholarship on international status politics conventionally focuses on how aspirant states seek higher positions in international social hierarchies or how higher-status states react to such aspirations through accommodation, suppression, or selective compromise. However, much less attention is paid to lower-status states’ social undermining behaviours - actions aimed at undercutting their higher-status counterparts’ favourable social standing driven by status dissatisfaction. This paper will seek to conceptualize the phenomena of social undermining in inter-state status dynamics. It will first discuss the difference between social undermining and other types of status behaviours. It will then develop a typology that distinguishes between four manifestations/subtypes of social undermining, depending on the constraints they face and the source of status dissatisfaction. The paper will demonstrate the applicability of this framework by examining China’s evolving social undermining behaviours against the US since 2012.

Author

• Pengqiao Lu, McGill University