State Identities and Motivations

This book asserts that state identities drive state motivations shaping state behavior. It describes several state motivations connected to self-esteem and identity: economic wealth, identity dominance through altruism, and controlling political outcomes for other states otherwise understood as decisionism. Part of this process is getting other states to acknowledge and recognize this self-image. As a result, self-esteem is at the core of state motivations, and seeks to connect the ideational with material reality. For instance, status quo powers, for instance the United States, will maintain their system because it is their system. On the other hand, revisionist powers like China and Russia will be motivated to amend or even overturn the system given their own understandings of self and self-esteem. Revisionist states may feel oppressed by an unfair or unjust international system, having exceptionalist identities of their own long supplanted by the United States. Feelings of humiliation define self-esteem and the need to overturn the system may be defined by these negative experiences. This book then adopts a constructivist framework of analysis and argues that narratives, identities, and whole realities are created through a cogent process of mutual constitution.