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6 Building on research in psychology and sociology, I argue that even capabilities distributions among major powers foster ambiguous status hierarchies, which generate more dissatisfaction and clashes over the status quo. And the more stratified the distribution of capabilities, the less likely such status competition is. Unipolarity thus generates far fewer incentives than either bipolarity or multipolarity for direct great power positional competition over status. Elites in the other major powers continue to prefer higher status, but in a unipolar system they face comparatively weak incentives to translate that preference into costly action.

First, if the material costs and benefits of a given status quo are what matters, why would a state be dissatisfied with the very status quo that had abetted its rise? The rise of China today naturally prompts this question, but it is hardly a novel situation. Most of the best known and most consequential power transitions in history featured rising challengers that were prospering mightily under the status quo. In case after case, historians argue that these revisionist powers sought recognition and standing rather than specific alterations to the existing rules and practices that constituted the order of the day.

Kornienko, “Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status,” American Economic Review 94 (September 2004). 7 F. Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976). 8 Schweller, “Realism and the Present Great-Power System: Growth and Positional Conflict over Scarce Resources,” in Ethan B. , Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 29. 9 Martin Shubik, “Games of Status,” Behavioral Science 16 (1971).