Description
Why do states deliberately decline great powers’/the invitations to join selective international organizations? Existing literature revolving around institutional withdrawal, member states’ expulsion, or membership suspension cannot explain this phenomenon. This article proposes the concept of status renunciation: states’ voluntary preference for lower social standing in the status quo institutional arrangement. Extrapolating its social psychological motivations, I argue that status renunciation signals states’ limited use of great material capacity and moral authority, thereby serving as a three-front, multivocal legitimation strategy that appeals to international and domestic audiences with diverse interests, identities, and psychological profiles. I build my argument abductively through a novel, multinational archival research on Jawaharlal Nehru’s two refusals to join the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a permanent member upon the invitations by the US in 1950, and the USSR in 1955. A detailed reconstruction of India’s status-seeking vis-à-vis the Cold War international order refines and nuances the existing theorization on “lying low to climb up,” and provides an important yet under-examined diplomatic history on rising powers’ negotiation of international institutional change.
