Middle Powers and Risky Status Seeking Behavior

• In Event: Status and the Rise of China

Abstract

The academic debate over status in international politics mainly focuses on either hegemons or rising powers. One missing part of the literature is middle powers—the important but understudied type of states in the world. If status is what hegemons and rising powers desire, it should be pursued by middle powers as well. By integrating prospect theory and status scholarship, this research intends to shed light on how middle powers seek status in world politics. It suggests that middle powers are more likely to take some risk-acceptant policies to seek status when they are in a domain of “status loss,” i.e., their previous status is in jeopardy. We conduct two cases to illustrate how middle powers seek status through risk-acceptant policies: ASEAN’s bold “community” building efforts in the 2000s and Australia’s “provocative” policies against China in 2016-2017.

Authors

• Kai He, Griffith University

• Huiyun Feng, Griffith University