Status, States, and Moral Sentiments: How Respect and Disrespect Shape International Politics

Respect can be understood as a considerate attitude that is expressed through the adequate acknowledgement of somebody's current status position. Status, States, and Moral Sentiments provides the first systematic study to investigate whether such regard has a significant effect on interactions between national governments. Does it 'really matter' when chief executives, such as Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Theresa May, Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump, complain about a lack of respect for their countries or their governments? Must we pay closer attention to such feelings and expressions because they markedly affect governments' openness, trust or assertiveness? Or can we treat such experiences, sentiments, and rhetoric as marginal, with an ephemeral impact on the 'real business' of interstate relations?

Drawing on a wide reading of research in anthropology, international relations, organizational studies, philosophy, sociology, and social psychology, Wolf develops a new theoretical framework and presents three case studies to compare mainstream readings to explanations that stress the role of respect. Findings show that respect has indeed a distinctive political impact; the experience of respect promotes openness, trust, and cooperation, whereas perceived disrespect fosters conflict by making policymakers angrier and more assertive. In each of the cases, policymakers were willing to compromise their country's material interests in order to thwart a relationship that they perceived as disrespectful: asserting one's 'proper' place in the status order proved to be a fundamental goal with an intrinsic ethical value. A thorough grasp of these effects is therefore indispensable for understanding many international interactions, especially when national representatives or populations are deeply concerned about their place in the international status order.