Does Prestige Matter in International Politics?

Abstract

This article examines the role of prestige as an important intersubjective element of power in international relations which has been largely ignored by neorealist approaches to the field. The article provides the etymological origins of the concept of prestige and distinguishes between its negative and positive sources such as brutality and self-restraint. Two case studies of American intervention and rollback in the Korean War are presented. This article argues that so long as neorealism fails to show that intersubjective understandings and expectations that give brute material capabilities meaning are caused by deep material structure, its analysis must be supplemented by intersubjective elements of power such as prestige.