Winner of the 2019 ISA Annual Best Book Award, International Studies Association Winner of the 2017 Lepgold Prize, Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University This book argues that status has been a concept often used to explain foreign policy choices and international conflict but it is not well defined or carefully studied. Fighting for Status ... Read moreis the best comprehensive treatment I have seen that advances a theory of when and how status matters.
Richard K. Herrmann, Ohio State University Fighting for Status is a theoretically innovative and methodologically rigorous study, with a sophisticated multimethod design that will reshape the analysis of status in international politics. The role of status is an enormously important but difficult question in many fields, and Renshon makes a pathbreaking contribution that will now be required reading.
Jack S. Levy, Rutgers University Renshon provides powerful proof of what scholars and practitioners have long believed but could never demonstrate concretely: that the people who govern states sometimes want status enough to fight for it. A major advance in the study of the causes of war, Fighting for Status is a theoretically rich and methodologically sophisticated tour de force that takes our understanding of the international political implications of a core human trait to a new level.
William C. Wohlforth, coauthor of America Abroad People think that countries go to war over resources, but all too often nations are, as Shakespeare put it, 'jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.' With insight and data, Renshon explains how nebulous concerns with status, prestige, and respect can drive the course of war and peace.
Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature Show Less