Description
The modern international system produces a series of identity categories such as 'democracy vs authoritarian', 'developed vs developing', 'East or West', 'religious vs secular', 'civilised vs barbaric'. Modern states that had undergone cycles of power rise and decline often found themselves in a situation of re-categorising their national identity in accordance with these categories. How has the buoyant of hierarchical identity categories affected state identity (trans)formation in modern world politics? This article offers a theoretical model to explain the mechanisms and consequences of identity transformations in the context of global hierarchical shifts. Drawing on search theory in microeconomics, We argue that identity transformation takes the form of search and match between state actors and the existing identity categories that define the global hierarchy. Contrary to the conventional understanding which contends that identity formation is a process of learning 'who we are', we argue that some states learn about 'who we are' by way of 'who we are not'. Our model supplements the existing theories of state identity formation as it 1) serves as a corrective to the explanations which focus on the sociolinguistic significance in identity making; 2) offers a more rigorous account for the identity politics in the empirical world such as modern Japan's identity dilemma, Hong Kong's struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and Turkey's identity issues regarding religion and secularism.
