The Industrial Revolution, Prestige, and the Possibility of Peace

The industrial revolution, brought forth in Europe as a result of cumulative cultural evolution, is the most drastic change ever wrought upon the world. This critical juncture, or punctuation, in the evolution of the global system heralded something incredible: it unlocked the possibility of competition among states via prestige, rather than power. By unlocking the ability of states to compete for status via technological and economic prowess—that is via prestige—the industrial revolution has offered humanity a tantalizingly elusive possibility: global peace. The implications of this epochal shift to the international system, and how states compete within it, has not been fully articulated. This is primarily due to the fact that status in international relations, and how state’s compete for status, has not been fully understood.

Consider that states, like humans, desire status. It’s a basic truth that many have long accepted. Yet, just as status is itself competed over, so too are there competing explanations for how states acquire status. The arguments have tended to coalesce into two camps. On the one hand, there are those who argue that brute force is the way to achieve status rank—call them the Machiavellians. On the other hand, there are those who argue that it is by demonstrating superior skill and competence, virtue even, that actors rise to the top—call them the Confucians. The Confucians and Machiavellians have long been at odds with each other. They represent the dichotomous thinking that has long surrounded status: one must be either a brute or a saint to garner influence.

Research in the life sciences, in particular evolutionary anthropology, psychology, biology and primatology, is showing that the Confucians and Machiavellians are both wrong—and right. Humans have evolved two distinct strategies to achieving status that match onto these old dichotomies: power and prestige.

In international relations, then status should be understood as an umbrella attribute. Status sits above and conjoins realist conceptions of power that trace onto material resource capacity. It also sits above constructivist versions of ‘social power’ that trace status to a state’s socially contrived, relativist positioning. A state’s status, in fact, refers to the totality of its ability to enact influence.

Prestige and power are two distinct methods that states can use to enhance their status. Prestige is a strategic category for enhancing status that entails using skill, altruism, and social connectedness to induce respect and willing deference from others. Power, on the other hand, is a strategic category for enhancing status that relies upon the use of force, coercion, threats, and leverage to induce fear and obedience from others. One can rise to the top by employing the strategies (and a mix of them!) characteristic of brutes and saints—of Confucians and Machiavellians.

Yet, internationally, the history of interstate relations gives little reason to believe that prestige-type strategies have played much role in helping states achieve status and influence. Whether from the regional perspective of the Early Modern (1500 AD-1800 AD) European state system and the ancient Chinese state system (500 BC-220 BC), or a more global perspective of the European colonial period, the route to attaining greater influence was through territorial acquisition, and subjugation via fear, coercion, and brute force. Indeed, throughout history there is scant evidence of prestige-type strategies for acquiring influence of global affairs (though, there is some). History, however, is replete with power-based strategies for acquiring influence over global affairs. It is no wonder why the realist school of international affairs, focused on anarchy and power, is so dominant.

Yet, importantly, the industrial revolution radically changed the global dynamic and incentive systems. Indeed, it made viable, for the first time in relations between state-level actors, the pursuit of prestige. Consider, by way of example, how human evolution unlocked prestige as a viable status-enhancement strategy. Early humans, relegated to the ground due to climactic change and the disappearance of rainforests in East Africa, began to develop physical and mental machinery that, in the animal kingdom, was completely unparalleled in its social learning capacity. These cultural accoutrements allowed humans unprecedented ability to pass down knowledge of toolmaking, food preparation, hunting strategies, and complex rituals, ideas, and norms (including, eventually, religion). No other animal species, including our closest relatives’ chimpanzees, have evolved similarly extensive cultural capacities. As a result of intergroup competition, incentives grew and grew for humans to rely on prestige-based status-enhancement strategies, as willing deference to those with highly developed skills and competencies had increasingly higher pay-offs for the well-being of individuals and their groups. Human groups that relied upon prestige-based status strategies more quickly adopted the newest tools and could in turn out-survive and out-compete groups wherein dominance-based status strategies prevailed. Thus, the prestige-based strategies in humans developed to a degree unseen in any other species in because incentives changed that allowed them to flourish.

The onset of the industrial revolution, in an analogous way, may have changed the incentives for states in the international system such that prestige-based strategies for status enhancement have finally become viable. Prior to the industrial revolution, economic growth for states was slow and staid. Growth relied on either squeezing more from your population or expanding your states purview, bringing additional exploitable resources under one’s command. Indeed, the logic of economic production changed little from 500 BC or 1500 AD. In such a zero-sum world, developing technologic and economic competencies offered far less value than conquering and acquiring resources by force. In such a world, geo-politics reigned, and expansionism paid.

The industrial revolution has reversed this logic. Rapid progress in innovative and inventive capacity has made it far more profitable to develop technological and economic competencies than ever before. We have transitioned to a world, not of geo-politics, but of geo-economics. It is a civilizational epoch unlike any post-dating hunter-gatherers. For the first time, prestige-based strategies for achieving status and influence across groups are viable. States can, and indeed do, profitably defer to those with great technological and economic competencies. In turn, those states are granted higher status and influence in the international system—sometimes extending down into domestic policies (such as policy advice from the IMF and World Bank).

As prestige hierarchies emerged with homo sapiens, so too, it might be argued, did a prestige-based international order dawn 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. Under the US’s prestige-based order, states that have willingly joined and deferred to the order have seen their citizens’ wellbeing improve drastically, while global hunger, disease, and poverty have plummeted. However, as the continuation of colonialism well into the 20th century demonstrated, it took substantial time before the changing incentive structures wrought by the industrial revolution would fully manifest. Yet, even the European imperialists came to realize that maintaining their empires was a net cost-imposition. The change in incentives and payoffs was remarkable and unmistakable.

This accounting of the rise of prestige-based strategies for status enhancement ought not to be confused with a Pollyannaish view of human relations. Human cognition rests upon machinery that evolved over millions of years in social conditions characterized (almost) solely by dominance-based strategies for status enhancement. Human groups to this day show remarkable diversity in their use of dominance vs prestige-based strategies. Which strategy, or relative mix of strategies, is used is thus constantly under negotiation and shaped by incentive structures. Yet, humans have a choice in status-based enhancement strategies that other animals do not. Humans can compete for status based upon their skills, altruism, and social connectedness rather than merely via force, coercion and leverage capacity. They can choose to be Confucian rather than Machiavellian.

The industrial revolution has similarly opened up a new possibility for states in the international system. The history of interstate relations, filled at is with violence, colonialism, and brute force, still ominously allures states to the pursuit of status via power-based strategies. But the global incentive structure has shifted such that there a viable alternative now exists. States can choose to compete for status via prestige, on the basis of technological and economic prowess. States too can choose to be Confucian, rather than Machiavellian.

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. It also provides a useful organizing heuristic for defending it. In particular, it strongly implies that if a prestige-oriented international order, undergirded as it is by America’s liberal values and organizational preferences, is to endure, the US must employ a prestige-based maintenance strategy. Such a strategy recognizes the folly of force and forever wars in the Middle East. In its simplest form, the strategy entails a three-part framework: develop our own abilities and competencies, identify the needs of our community and constituent members states, and leverage our abilities to improve the community and empower individual actors to achieve desired ends.

Historically, no great power has done a better job than the US of leveraging competence and skill to help others. But, particularly following four years of Donald Trump, there is ample room for improvement. With a strategic rival in China now looming, it ought to be more incumbent upon the US than ever to exploit the opportunities for peace afforded us by the industrial revolution, and to double down on a prestige-oriented strategy for maintaining its status and influence. Doing so may well be the key to world peace.