The struggle for recognition in International Relations: status, revisionism, and rising powers

In this book Michelle Murray offers a theoretical frame for understanding the role of social factors in power transitions through the notion of struggle for recognition. Murray conceptualizes rising powers’ desire for disturbing the international status quo as a socially constructed act. Focusing on the role of material forces in states’ foreign policy calculations, the book attempts to elucidate the social aspect of states’ desire for recognition by gaining ontological security and legitimate social status. To secure a viable identity with social dignity, less recognized states, Murray argues, are required to achieve truth and self-confidence about what they desire to become as independent major powers as seen through the social lens of a significant other. In the course of the book, although she refers to dynamics of power transition in an objective revisionist manner in most cases, the author succinctly draws a correlation between revisionists’ desire for social recognition through...