Search

Great power status is an essentially contested concept, despite the commentaries of some IR theorists. In this paper I examine materialist definitions of great power status and find them lacking. Also, an intersubjective understanding approach to great power status fails at least insofar as no one can agree who a great power is, in at least some of the cases out there. After examining the literature I discuss how narratives influence foreign policy decision making and how a state's identity leads it to adopt certain policies - in this case, the pursuit of great power status. I extend this from a relational-identity perspective to a relational-power perspective, and seek to bring ideational studies and realism closer together. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I provide a constructivist model of threat, and how it shapes policy choice in great powers. The model combines social network analysis of elite politics with an examination of how actors within the elite can use the narratives within a state to shape the image of another state as friend or foe. This view of the other state shapes a policy space, within which the members of the elite negotiate various options. I focus my study on the losers of major wars - states who have lost without losing policy autonomy, and how they shape policy toward the winners of those wars. I identify ideal-typical network configurations and narratives, and discuss how those configurations or narratives can be effectively deployed by actors. I offer a plausibility probe - a study of US policy toward Great Britain after the War of 1812 through the Civil War - and conclude with the policy implications of my model. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]