Recognition and Prestige

Abstract

The very earliest writings on international relations confirm the significance of the pursuit of honour and prestige alongside more ‘base’ concerns with relative power and wealth. Thucydides’s description of the Peloponnesian war accounts for the fate of the Melians in their unequal struggle with the Athenians. Simple survival should have counselled surrender, yet honour dictated what turned out to be a suicidal course of action. This theme is taken up in classical realism. In Martin Wight’s (1978, p. 97) discussion of power politics ‘honour is the halo around interests, prestige is the halo around power’. Hans Morgenthau (1967, p. 69), doyen of realist theorists, identified the contest for prestige as one of three ‘basic manifestations’ of the struggle for power in international relations and outlined the prestige policies that statesmen may pursue. The other two are protection of the status quo or imperialism — where pursuit of prestige represents one of the instrumentalities through which they may be achieved.