The Rise and Fall of Status-Seekers: A View from Historical East Asia

Graduate Research and Development Network on Asian Security (GRADNAS) Seminar Series

Why do some status-seeking states rise while others fail to do so? Who rises or falls when the established international order undergoes a transition? Status-seeking has emerged as a flourishing avenue of research in international relations (IR). However, a general theory to explain the rise and fall of status-seeking states remains underdeveloped. To fill this gap, I propose a general theory to explain and compare the rise and fall of status-seekers. In particular, I focus on status-seeking during periods of international political change, when the interplay between international social structure and states becomes salient as structural constraints loosen up and the room for agency expands. I argue that if the strategies of status-seeking states align with changes in the international social structure where they are embedded, they can elevate their status. To examine the validity of my theory, I compare the status-seeking strategies of Korea and Japan and their outcomes during the Ming-Qing transition (1583-1683) and the Westphalian transition (1839-1912), two pivotal changes in historical East Asia.

Speaker
Jaeyoung Kim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at San Diego State University. Dr. Kim’s research interests include international security, state formation, and global and historical international relations with a regional focus on East Asia. His dissertation, The Rise and Fall of Status-Seekers: Commitment, Strategy, and International Political Change in East Asia, proposes a theory of status ascent grounded in East Asian history to explain why some states improve their status while others fail to do so when the established international order undergoes a transition. Before joining San Diego State University, he received his Ph.D. from McGill University, Canada, and his M.A. and B.A. from Seoul National University, South Korea. For more information, please visit: jaeyoungkim.weebly.com

Discussant
Steven Ward is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Pembroke College (where he currently serves as the Director of Studies for the History and Politics Tripos). His first book – Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers (Cambridge University Press, 2017) – explains how status anxiety can push rising states to launch costly, risky challenges to the international status quo, and tests this account against the records of Wilhelmine Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the United States around the turn of the 20th century. His work has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, the Review of International Studies, International Theory, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Interactions, and the Journal of Global Security Studies, and has been featured in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.

This event is the third in the GRADNAS Seminar Series of 2024. The series will showcase the emerging scholarship on the historical International Relations of Asia. There has been a “global” and a “historical” turn in International Relations scholarship in recent years. Scholars are increasingly looking at Asian history to enrich International Relations theory. What are the theoretical insights that emerge from studying Asian history? Does Asian history provide us with new concepts and new understandings of order? Does Asian history challenge the received metanarratives of International Relations theory? How were historical Asian polities connected with each other and with the world beyond Asia? Can the International Relations theoretical findings from Asian history shed light on other parts of the world? What, if anything, do these findings tell us about the emerging world order? Join us as we celebrate and showcase the excellent research by GRADNAS members and friends on the Historical International Relations of Asia. Visit our website here.

For more information, contact the GRADNAS Coordinator, Tommy Chai at gradnas@anu.edu.au.