In her book, Ayşe Zarakol addresses a question of profound importance to international relations theory: How do states respond to wartime defeat? Why are some aggressors quickly accepted back into the international community while others continue to be viewed with suspicion? Zarakol argues that the answer lies in the extent to which defeated states embrace domestic and international policies that are congruent with existing normative understandings of development and modernity in international politics. By embracing policies or values that resonate with “insiders” in international society, defeated powers seek to shed the stigma that they are backward or uncivilized states, and thereby rejoin the West as recognized members of international society.

Zarakol grounds her theory in a description of international politics as a stratified social hierarchy shaped by conceptions of modernity. In particular, European states inside the Westphalian core are seen as developed and modern, while non-European states in the periphery are viewed as backward and outsiders. Borrowing from Erving Goffman, Zarakol argues that these outsider states suffer from “the stigma of being developmentally behind” (p. 62). While possessing formal sovereign equality, stigmatized states struggle in the face of external discrimination as well as their own feelings of inferiority. As a result, historically stigmatized states will prefer “strategies which satisfy social-status cravings” (p. 57), even when these “identity-focused” policies provide fewer material benefits than do the alternatives (p. 12).

In general, a stigmatized state has two strategies that it can employ to respond to its subordinate status. It can attempt to shed the existing stigma, often by reforming its domestic institutions in order to appear more modern. Alternatively, it can embrace the stigma by attempting to portray a particular identity as a “blessing in disguise” (p. 104). Zarakol does not provide definitive predictions as to when a state might prefer either of these strategies, although she notes that a stigmatized state's choices will be informed by its imagination, material capabilities, and historical experiences, as well as the permissiveness of the broader normative framework (pp. 105–7).

To evaluate her framework, Zarakol compares the policy choices of three outsider states—Turkey, Japan, and Russia. The parallels among these cases are striking. Each of these states was a recognized member of the international system, who was nevertheless viewed by insider states as fundamentally different and backward from themselves. Each of these states embraced reckless foreign policies designed to force Western powers to acknowledge their power and prestige. After suffering catastrophic defeats, each debated whether and how to reenter international society. Turkey and Japan embraced policies designed to shed an existing stigma, while Russia struggled to recapture its legitimacy.

There is much to recommend about After Defeat. It develops a provocative and ambitious theoretical framework. It identifies fascinating comparisons from its well-chosen case studies. At the same time, some outstanding questions remain. First, Zarakol's description of international politics as a bifurcated world of insiders and outsiders based on modernity is problematic. To begin with, these categories are much more fluid and contested than she allows. The “West” or “Westphalian” system is not a coherent and homogenous category with fixed and defined membership. Revolutionary France, the Catholic states of Spain and Portugal, and the fascist states of Germany or Italy are among the myriad states whose “insider” status was in question at various times.

Similar problems emerge from attempts to characterize who were the “outsiders.” Standards of civilization derived from modernity sometimes defined outsiders, but as David Cannadine argues in Ornamentalism (2002), European elites often put more stock in antimodern markers of aristocratic or monarchical virtue when assessing the legitimacy of non-European actors. Similarly, it is unclear whether these classifications were a product of social hierarchies or underlying power imbalances. The hardening of racial and religious categories was more a consequence of European political expansion than a cause, and there was significant local and regional variation in the perceived legitimacy of individual rulers. In short, the production of hierarchy was a much more complicated, contingent, and contested process than the categories of West and non-West, European and non-European imply.

Second, it is unclear how valuable it is to use the language of social psychology, in particular the notion of “stigma,” to explain the workings of corporate entities such as states. Zarakol often describes states suffering shame or seeking recognition as if states feel emotions like people. Yet her own case studies reveal that stigmatized states are far from unitary actors. Elite actors respond to external pressures differently than does the mass public. Certain institutions, such as the military, are more vulnerable to external pressure than their economic or religious counterparts. Responses to external pressures to “modernize” run the gamut from traditionalist rejection to nationalist resistance to reformist tinkering to accommodationist embrace.

Zarakol opts not to offer “a universal theory of domestic contestation” (p. 103), and as a consequence, she often reduces these complicated dynamics to a psychological story of stimulus response. Moreover, the range of behaviors that she ascribes to stigmas is strikingly broad. Stigma can explain “both the conciliatory and the revisionist measures” of the Ottoman Empire (p. 124). It can account both for Japan's use of Western methods and its denunciation of them (p. 171). It lies at the root of Russian appeasement in the early 1990s and petulance in the late 1990s (pp. 226–27).

Third, Zarakol could do more to distinguish between the importance of status-seeking and power-seeking behavior in her individual case studies. At first blush, it is not that surprising that a defeated state would seek to abandon its discredited institutions and embrace those of a victor. After all, success and failure in war is a fairly clear and credible indicator of the institutional effectiveness of rival modes of domestic political or economic organization. Yet the author pushes back against materialist explanations, arguing that the policies of the states she examines go “far beyond what would have been necessary to ensure physical security” (p. 37).

The case studies present a somewhat more ambiguous picture. Turkey, for example, “lost 85 percent of its territories and 75 percent of its population between 1870 and 1920” (p. 141). Is it any wonder that Mustafa Kemal rejected Pan-Islamism, which risked a fresh confrontation with European colonial powers in the Middle East, and Pan-Turkism, which threatened the interests of its Soviet ally in Central Asia, in favor of moderate Westernization? Japan was devastated by World War II, two atomic weapons, and an invasive seven-year American occupation. Is it surprising that Japanese politicians rejected nationalist calls to remilitarize, which would have alarmed regional partners, and socialist calls to normalize relations with the communist bloc, which might have imperiled the US alliance, in favor of selective domestic reforms?

Even Russia's mercurial behavior seems conditioned as much by material circumstance as status seeking. Boris Yeltsin's liberalization schemes failed to yield dramatic economic profits, while America exploited Russia's weakness in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. As Zarakol admits, Russia's “natural material strength” provided Russian hawks with more “breathing room” to resist domestic reforms and push back against perceived foreign humiliations (pp. 237–38). Indeed, when it became clear that Westernization was yielding few material gains, Vladimir Putin shifted Russian policy in a new, more confrontational direction.

This is not to minimize the value of Zarakol's framework nor her illuminating case studies. At a time when the United States seeks to grapple with foreign policy challenges from states such as Iran and China, a greater sensitivity to, and understanding of, the role of stigmas in international politics is essential.