The Practices of Evaluating Entitlements: Rethinking “Reputation” in International Politics

Abstract

AbstractHow do reputations work in international politics? The dominant frameworks in international relations scholarship argue that reputation is subservient to real interest or past actions do not influence observers’ behavior in anarchy, and inconsistent reputational beliefs are irrational among policymakers who have miscalculated their interests. These substantialist accounts are problematic in the light of taking political practices seriously. I argue that reputations work within communities of practice through a tripartite process involving actor's entitlement claims, audiences’ relational evaluation of such claims, and the actor's performance to secure entitlements in issue-specific interactions. I illustrate the analytical usefulness of this conceptualization against conventional accounts by studying Brazil's multiple reputational concerns in the issue area of humanitarian crises in the post–Cold War period. The framework offered in the article has a wider relevance for examining how reputations work across states, for example, in India and China, and in different issue areas by foregrounding normative appraisals of each other by community members in distinct reputational games. It also sets the stage for further examination of the intersection of reputational practices upon other social capital such as status.