States use symbolic gestures to increase their international status, or relative po- sition, within the international community. But how do the status-seeking actions of one state affect the status of others? The common assumption is that improvements in one state’s status lead to the relative deterioration of other states’ status by compari- son. In this paper, we focus on status’ social qualities to delineate multiple theoretical pathways through which one state’s status can change – or not – relative to another. Status is not conferred in a vacuum and the consequences of status-altering activities may spill over to third parties. We field an original survey and reanalyze several exist- ing studies to understand how relative status operates in the case of foreign aid; these surveys reveal novel empirical patterns about the circumstances under which a state’s status will update relative to other states. We extend the analysis to examine who updates perceptions, what actions change status, and for whom status changes. Our findings suggest that status-enhancing actions may be successful at augmenting status amongst peers, but ultimately unsuccessful at changing global hierarchies.

国家利用象征性姿态来提高其国际地位或在国际社会中的相对地位。但一国寻求地位的行为如何影响其他国家的地位呢？普遍的假设是，相比之下，一国地位的提高会导致其他国家地位的相对恶化。在本文中，我们关注地位的社会品质，以描绘一个国家的地位相对于另一个国家可以改变或不改变的多种理论路径。地位不是在真空中授予的，改变地位的活动的后果可能会波及到第三方。我们进行了一项原始调查，并重新分析了几项现有研究，以了解相对地位在外援情况下如何发挥作用；这些调查揭示了关于一个国家的地位相对于其他国家更新的情况的新颖的经验模式。我们将分析扩展到检查谁更新了看法、什么行为改变了状态以及谁的状态发生了变化。我们的研究结果表明，提高地位的行动可能会成功地提高同侪之间的地位，但最终无法成功改变全球等级制度。