Status Orders: Toward a Local Understanding of Status Dynamics in World Politics

This analytical essay highlights the importance of status orders in the study of status and prestige in world politics. Drawing on recent research in the field, I argue that understanding the particular social structures that regulate the status dynamics within social collectives is crucial to understanding how actors seek and receive status in world politics. I review the literature on status in IR and introduce the concept of status orders as context-specific and local social structures that determine what is considered prestigious within a particular group, community, or club. Using examples from war-making, nuclear weapons, and diplomatic practice, I argue that the fact that status dynamics is often produced locally and not globally forces us to focus less on “universal” aspirations for status, and more on where that actor sought status from and eventually according to which yardstick that actor experienced a change in status.