Leadership by Prestige, Not Dominance

Prepared by Jonathon P Sine for New America’s Essay Contest on Improving U.S. Security Policy

International relations theory has a problem. Whether realism, liberal institutionalism, Marxism, or constructivism, the foundations are faulty. For, when traced backwards, they ultimately come to rest upon troubled conceptions of human nature. These conceptions have been arrived at deductively. In order to further our understanding of international relations, the field must change the micro-foundations upon which it is built. Assumptions about human nature, and by extension how human societies function and interact, must be grounded not in the musings of deductive theorizers, but rather in the empiricism of the life sciences. This essay will advance a new heuristic, drawn from the life sciences, for international relations thinkers to better conceptualize global order: prestige vs. dominance. And, in so doing, it will argue that to ensure the endurance of the American-led order, particularly in light of ‘strategic competition’ with the Chinese Communist Party, we must redouble our efforts to maintain prestige.

Hierarchies

Human societies, from hunter-gatherer to present day, are characterized by some degree of hierarchy. While hierarchies in international relations have traditionally been considered synonymous with dominance hierarchies, i.e. power, the life sciences have developed a more robust approach.11See: David A. Lake. “Domination.” In Hierarchy in International Relations, 93-137. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2009. Accessed July 15, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt7z79w.8. And https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2009-12-19/hierarchy-international-relations This approach formalizes two distinct types of human hierarchies: dominanceand prestige.

Dominance is nearly synonymous with the realist definition of power, namely forceful control of resources. A dominance hierarchy is characterized by the use of fear, force, coercion, and intimidation by higher ranking members to control resources and influence lower ranking members. In this form of hierarchy, the focal point of analysis is the leader, as his “high social rank is not freely conferred by others” but rather “seized and maintained” by force.22Jon K. Maner. “Dominance and Prestige: A Tale of Two Hierarchies.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 26, no. 6 (December 2017): 526–31. doi:10.1177/0963721417714323.

Prestige, in contrast, is predicated upon respect and willing deference from subordinates. Higher rank is afforded by subordinates to those who have valued skills, abilities, and/or know how that is useful to the group and its constituent individuals. This occurs because willing subordination to someone with useful skills can help individuals, and groups, achieve valued ends. The focal point is first and foremost on subordinates, as it is only their willing deference that affords leaders high rank.33For academic treatment, see: Joseph Henrich & Gil-White, F. J. (2001). The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(3), 165–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(00)00071-4 For a more colloquial treatment, see: Kevin Simler (2015). Social Status: Down the Rabbit Hole. Melting Asphalt. https://meltingasphalt.com/social-status-down-the-rabbit-hole/

The presence of prestige hierarchies may be a novel characteristic of humankind, stemming from our evolved capacity for cultural learning.44For a book length treatment of the importance of cultural learning in human evolution, see: Joseph Henrich. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016. While some social animals, such as dolphins and elephants, may have convergently evolved hierarchies predicated upon prestige, almost all other social animals, including our closest relatives chimpanzees, organize their societies exclusively via dominance hierarchies.55For an examination of the distinctiveness, and commonalities, of human social organization vis-à-vis other social species, see: Top of Form Christakis, Nicholas A. 2019. Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. New York, New York: Little Brown Spark. 2019.Bottom of Form Dominance hierarchies may thus be a more primitive form of organization than prestige hierarchies.

Realism

Three of the most esteemed contemporary scholars in the realist tradition converge in seeing an anarchic international arena amenable only to dominance hierarchies, wherein the currency of control is raw power and control over resources. Hans Morgenthau saw human nature as characterized by an animus dominandi, or an unceasing drive to dominate. 66Hans Morgenthau regarded prestige as effectively an outgrowth of power itself, a ‘reputation for power’. See: Daniel Markey (1999) Prestige and the origins of war: Returning to realism’s roots, Security Studies, 8:4, 126-172, DOI: 10.1080/0963641990842938877Glenn H. Snyder. “Mearsheimer’s World-Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay.” International Security 27, no. 1 (2002): 149-73. Accessed July 16, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/3092155. John Mearsheimer’s offensive realist school, conceptualizing states as existing in an anarchic world singularly pursuing hegemonic dominance out of a desperate need for control, has little room for prestige. Kenneth Waltz’s defensive realist program, although viewing the need for security as stopping short of hegemony, has nonetheless also “eliminated the prestige motive entirely” in analyzing interstate relations solely through a paradigm of power.88Daniel Markey (1999) Prestige and the origins of war: Returning to realism’s roots, Security Studies, 8:4, 126-172, DOI: 10.1080/09636419908429388

Meanwhile, the four foundational thinkers of realism possessed more nuanced, if still flawed, views of prestige. Thucydides laid the groundwork in deducing the three main motives for human conflict: security, profit, and prestige.99Thucydides frequently used terms like honor, reputation, and glory interchangeably. Machiavelli believed that a prince needed to cultivate both dominance and prestige—i.e. fear and love—to rule effectively, while, per his famous injunction, believing the former more fundamental than the latter. Hobbes saw an unquenchable human desire for ‘glory’ so powerful and violent that it could only be suppressed by a domineering Leviathan. Rousseau thought man’s descent into civilization corrupted him into a self-aggrandizing state of amour propre, endlessly striving for the impossible: recognition by others of his prestige. 1010For in depth treatment of these thinkers, see: Daniel Markey (1999) Prestige and the origins of war: Returning to realism’s roots, Security Studies, 8:4, 126-172, DOI: 10.1080/09636419908429388

While the foundational thinkers in the realist school had a view of prestige that brings us close to theorizing a prestige hierarchy, it does not quite get us there. Furthermore, these views of human nature are not empirically grounded. They are thus a less than ideal foundation for building an international relations framework upon.

The Reality of Prestige

An appreciation for our evolved psychology provides insights that clarify and update foundational intuitions of the field, while transgressing those of contemporary realist thinkers. Humankind has not evolved to be hide-bound by a quest for dominance in an anarchic world. Rather, our species’ evolutionary success has produced an evolved psychology that is extremely capable of, and disposed to, establishing order from chaos. Humans have evolved to cooperate, with many of our most complex moral sentiments likely co-evolving to facilitate this cooperation.1111Curry, O, H Whitehouse, and D Mullins. n.d. (2019) “Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies.” Current Anthropology 60 (1): 47–69. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8dd8d82d-3829-4857-bcf4-eebf196d11be Humans are of course tribal, prone to forming in-groups to fight out-groups. But like a double-edged sword, it is this penchant for in-group cooperation against an outgroup that has fostered teamwork, social learning, and that equipped humans with the mental machinery to value prestige, not just dominance.1212Within human societies, dominance and prestige can often covary, which helps explain the analytic difficulty in separating the two. Factors such as strength, intelligence, discipline, and empathy that endear one to be socially valued by others also make one powerful. However, it is very possible for a hierarchy and an individual to be skewed disproportionately in one direction. A useful analogy is ‘baboon’ vs ‘elephant’ leadership styles. Mugabe, for example, is the archetypal baboon leader, using dominance, fear, and coercion to maintain control. Mandela, on the other hand, is the archetypal elephant leader, obtaining leadership by endearing respect and being able to help his people. This analogy is more fully developed in: William von Hippel. The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy. Harper Collins. 2018.

Yet, prior to World War 2, international order was seemingly one dominance hierarchy after another. Graham Allison’s recent treatment of ‘power transition theory’ in Destined for War exemplifies this logic. It is the Thucydidean dynamic—a prototypically rising Athens and fearful Sparta—that leads to war. Allison’s application of this logic to World War 1, though, would benefit from a prestige-dominance interpretation.1313Graham Allison. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

Despite being a time of unprecedented globalization, the undergirding orientation of the international order in 1914 was decidedly toward dominance, not prestige. It was, after all, the high-water mark of imperialism and colonialism. Competition in that system, then, reflected realist (or power/dominance) dynamics in their archetypal formulation. When the dominance hierarchy frayed, the players resorted to the prevailing means of the system (force, coercion, intimidation) to attempt to improve their rank. A dominance-based international order may have been intrinsic to the nature of the world at that time, and perhaps to all prior periods, as the powerful could so readily and profitably take and dominate land. Perhaps global hierarchy in 1914, as in all prior periods, was mired in a more primitive evolutionary dynamic. More chimp like than human, more amenable to dominance than prestige. As the life sciences make clear, though, such a global order is not inevitable.

Prestige and Pax-Americana

As prestige hierarchies emerged with homo sapiens, so too has a prestige-based international order finally dawned under _pax-_Americana. A combination of an environment far less conducive to conquest and colonization and the rise of a powerful state willing to nurture a prestige-based hierarchy has shifted the paradigm in international order. The American-led order has overseen the greatest collective improvement in human flourishing our species has ever known, largely because it is the first international order predicated disproportionately upon prestige. While liberal internationalists look at proximate features like international organizations as themselves facilitating cooperation, the underlying foundation is deeper: under the right conditions and incentives, humans are naturally disposed to organizing via prestige hierarchies.1414The logic of this essay jives with much of the liberal internationalist perspective, but distinctly challenges its foundational assumptions—i.e. Waltz’s ‘first image factors’—of human nature in much the same way as realism. Antonio Franceschet. “The Ethical Foundations of Liberal Internationalism.” International Journal 54, no. 3 (1999): 463-81. doi:10.2307/40203406. Specifically, under a leader who possesses socially valued competencies that facilitate subordinates’ achievement of their own wellbeing, goals and ambitions. Under the US’s prestige-based order, states that have willingly joined and deferred to the order have seen their security situations and citizens’ wellbeing improve drastically, while global hunger, disease, and poverty have plummeted.

A prestige-oriented leader, unlike a dominance-oriented leader, demonstrates superior and desirable behavior and then helps others achieve similar ends for themselves. Applied to international relations, a prestige-dominance heuristic may appear similar to the soft-hard power distinction drawn by Joseph Nye. But, while there are similarities, particularly in that prestige can serve as an attractive force inducing emulation, it is quite distinct. Attaining prestige, unlike in Nye’s conception of soft power, includes hard aspects such as military and economic development, in so far as competencies in those areas are used to benefit subordinates and partners. Therein lies the key distinction: while soft power is principally about attraction, prestige is principally about providing utility to others.1515Joseph S. Nye. “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy, no. 80, 1990, pp. 153–171. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1148580

Prestige, Dominance, and US-China Competition

With the US-China relationship spiraling, it will be important to keep in mind the prestige-dominance heuristic. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was originally willing to join and conform to many aspects of the US-led order. Under Zhu Rongji and Jiang Zemin, the CCP made meaningful changes to its domestic political economy to join the WTO. The CCP has joined many multilateral fora on terms established by the US. As a result of this willing deference and integration into the US-led order, the Chinese people have prospered. This pattern of willing capitulation lasted until roughly the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 (Xi Jinping’s ascension in 2012 being an accelerant), at which point the CCP hastened to jettison ‘hide and bide’ in favor of an increasingly open attempt to increase its rank and influence in the international order.1616Daniel Tobin. “How Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ Should Have Ended U.S. Debate on Beijing’s Ambitions.” Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. March 13, 2020. https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/testimonies/SFR%20for%20USCC%20TobinD%2020200313.pdf

Today’s strategic competition, more than anything, is rooted in divergent domestic systems vying for global influence. Each system is undergirded by mutually incompatible values and governance models (market-Leninism vs Liberal democratic capitalism). By extension, the Liberal international system that America instantiated is similarly undergirded by a set of values that are fundamentally incompatible with the CCP’s Leninist system. Indeed, “what spooks [the CCP] more than American weapons and soldiers are ideas—hostile ideas they believe America has embedded in the discourse and institutions of the existing global order.”1717Tanner Greer. China’s Plans to Win Control of the Global Order. Tablet Mag. May 17, 2020. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-plans-global-order Liberal democracy may be the quintessential example of a prestige-oriented values system. Leninism may be the quintessential example of a dominance-oriented values system.

Liberal democracy entails a commitment to individual sovereignty, holds that persuasion and debate are the primary means for achieving compliance, and that while these fundamental principles are universalizable, there is no dispositive answer to what constitutes ‘right’ or ‘good’.1818Aaron Sibarium. Two Cheers for Liberal Fideism. American Mind. September 20, 2019. https://americanmind.org/features/the-common-good-will-out-or-will-it/two-cheers-for-liberal-fideism/ In such a system, people with socially valued skills compete to gain respect and influence. Leninism, meanwhile, explicitly disavows the cannon of western political thought concerned with individual sovereignty and constraints on state power.1919Leninism was derived as a revolutionary political philosophy by a single individual, Vladimir Lenin, who was jaded by what he saw in the first world war. Leninism, as a result, was crafted in contraposition to liberalism. It views liberal political philosophy, especially individual sovereignty and separation and limitation of state power, as mere contrivances designed to protect bourgeois class interests over and against those of the proletariat. See: Neil Harding. _Leninism._Duke University Press, 2016. Instead, Leninism promises a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ led by a ‘vanguard party.’ This Party is to rule with full power, unencumbered, singularly capable of deciphering via ‘dialectical materialism’ the ‘historically correct’ path to take on behalf of the proletariat. Substantive dissent, or even debate, that challenges the Party’s ‘historically correct’ line is less often brooked than regarded as ‘destabilizing’. Predictably, this ideology reliably produces governance systems predicated upon dominance. Totalitarianism is in fact a feature of Leninism, not a bug.2020The core tenets of Leninism, and its historical development, are explicated clearly in: Neil Harding. _Leninism._Duke University Press, 2016.

As a result of the emerging systems competition, the US will need to compete intelligently to sustain its place atop the hierarchy of nations and to maintain its preferred version of the global international order. This will require thinking from first principles and thus understanding that the current US-led global order is principally a prestige hierarchy, and only secondarily a dominance hierarchy. Conceptualizing the current international order this way comports with the growing recognition that competition in today’s world, unlike 1914, is primarily geo-economic, characterized by positive sum ‘coopetition’, rather than geopolitical, i.e. a largely zero-sum contest over land.2121Edward N. Luttwak. “From Geopolitics to Geo-Economics: Logic of Conflict, Grammar of Commerce.” The National Interest, no. 20 (1990): 17-23. Accessed July 16, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/42894676 This shift is something the CCP itself recognizes. Rhetorically, the CCP speaks of ‘win-win cooperation’, a ‘community of common destiny’, and the benefits that its China model can have for countries interested in learning from it. This is language straight from the prestige playbook. Tangibly, the CCP is investing trillions in economies around the world via the many legs of its Belt and Road Initiative. Despite some problems, it is undeniable that many countries, or at least the elites within the countries, are happy to receive the CCP’s help and munificence. This is a prestige-oriented tactic.

Given the Leninist nature of the CCP, it is highly plausible that its prestige-oriented tactics are undergirded by dominance-oriented ends. While many international incidents have hinted at this—‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’—its domestic behavior is the most informative: Uighur genocide, imperial suppression of Tibet, and a growing techno-totalitarian crackdown on dissent from all quarters. If states are curious about how the CCP would alter the international order if given the chance, what better place to look for evidence than domestically?2222Two interesting findings from the literature on dominance-oriented leaders, highly applicable to CCP domestic leadership, are that dominance-oriented leaders tend to “view talented group members as potential threats, and respond by demoting and closely controlling the most talented members of their group” and that “they also isolated their subordinates and prevented them from bonding with one another, because alliances among subordinates were viewed as posing potential threats.” Prestige-oriented leaders tend to do the opposite in both instances. See: Jon K. Maner. “Dominance and Prestige: A Tale of Two Hierarchies.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 26, no. 6 (December 2017): 526–31. doi:10.1177/0963721417714323. In competing with the CCP, the US should double down on its own prestige-oriented strategy while exposing the CCP’s dominance-orientation. The US should emphasize that for most states, their ability to achieve their own valued ends under a CCP-led order will likely deteriorate, not improve. A tianxia-like system will almost certainly be less ‘win-win’ than the current Liberal international order.2323For discussion of tianxia, and how the CCP is likely commissioning scholarship to repackage it for a modern context, see: Nadège Rolland. China’s Vision for a New World Order. National Bureau of Asian Research, Special Report no. 83, January 27, 2020. https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-vision-for-a-new-world-order/

While some states will determine that the CCP is better positioned to help them achieve their desires, or find the CCP’s tolerance of authoritarianism more compatible with their political ambitions, the US must, to a degree, learn to live with it. In responding to the ‘CCP Challenge’, we should not make the mistake of adopting a dominance-based strategy, e.g. forcing states to turn away from CCP largesse.2424This will be difficult as “in times of intergroup conflict, people prefer dominant leaders, who are perceived as well-suited to resolve antagonistic engagements with other groups,” while the “presence of intergroup conflict can reduce the value placed on prestige, because behaviors associated with prestige (e.g., altruism) can be seen as undermining the interests of the ingroup.” See: Jon K. Maner. “Dominance and Prestige: A Tale of Two Hierarchies.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 26, no. 6 (December 2017): 526–31. doi:10.1177/0963721417714323. Intelligent competition must be based, rather, on a strategy of prestige. In short, we will have to ask not what the world can do for us, but what we can do for the world.

Others First

The prestige vs dominance framework provides a useful lens for international relations practitioners and theorizers. It elucidates that the current global order, perhaps for the first time, is disproportionately predicated upon prestige while providing a useful organizing heuristic for defending it. In particular, it strongly implies that if America’s prestige-oriented international order, undergirded as it is by American values and organizational preferences, is to endure, the US must employ a prestige-based maintenance strategy. In its simplest form, this entails a three-part framework:

1) Develop our own abilities and competencies

2) Identify the needs of our community and constituent members states

3) Leverage our abilities to improve the community and empower individual actors to achieve desired ends

Many intelligent people are currently at work figuring out how to best revitalize the US economy in light of COVID-19. To sustain the American-led order, though, equally important will be figuring out how to leverage this revitalization to help our partners overseas. Toward this end, we must use our Foreign Service personnel, overseas security personnel, and commercial contacts to intimately understand our partners and subordinates needs and goals. This effort will necessitate maximizing inter-agency cooperation—especially USAID, State, Defense, and the DFC—to efficiently and comprehensively leverage our national strength to help our allies and subordinates flourish.2525David Lake, as an example, makes a similar argument to the prestige theory found here. Empirically, he finds that subordinate states are willing to make substantive sovereignty trade-offs for security guarantees. I extend this logic in holding that such tradeoffs are pervasive across multiple domains, and occur so long as the subordinate state substantively benefits and sees its own goals achieved. See: David Lake (2004). Hierarchy in International Relations: Authority, Sovereignty, and the New Structure of World Politics. A New Deal at home should lead to a “New Deal for the world.”2626G. John Ikenberry: The Next Liberal Order: The Age of Contagion Demands More Internationalism, Not Less. Foreign Affairs. July/August 2020. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-06-09/next-liberal-order

Historically, no great power has done a better job than the US of leveraging its privileged leadership position to help others. Yet, there has always been ample room for improvement. With a strategic competitor now engaging in similar tactics, it is more incumbent upon the US than ever to double down on Dale Carnegie’s dictum set forth in How to Win Friends and Influence People: always think in terms of others’ interests. That, in short, is the prestige heuristic. It may well be the key to maintaining the American-led global order.