Online Appendix for \"Defending Hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean: Symbolic Capital and Political Dominance in Early Modern China and the Cold War\"

Why do leading actors invest in costly projects that they expect will not yield appreciable military or economic benefits? We identify a causal process in which concerns about legitimacy lead them to attempt to secure dominance in arenas of high symbolic value by investing wealth and labor into unproductive (in direct military and economic terms) goods and performances. We provide evidence for this claim through a comparative study of the American Project Apollo and the Ming Dynasty's treasure fleets. We locate our argument within a broader constructivist and practice-theoretic understanding of hierarchy and hegemony. We build on claims that world politics is a sphere of complex social stratification by viewing constituent hierarchies in terms of social fields. Our specific theory and broader framework, we contend, provide tools for understanding the workings of power politics beyond military and economic competition.

为何主导行为体愿意投入成本高昂的项目，且预期这些项目无法带来可观的军事或经济收益？我们揭示了一类因果机制：出于对合法性的关切，主导行为体试图通过向无直接军事、经济收益的物品与展演投入财富与人力，以获取高符号价值领域的主导权。我们通过对比分析美国阿波罗计划（Project Apollo）与明代宝船队，为上述论点提供了实证支撑。我们将本论证置于更广泛的建构主义（constructivist）与实践理论（practice-theoretic）视角下的等级与霸权分析框架之中。我们基于“世界政治是复杂社会分层场域”这一论断，将构成性等级体系以社会场域（social fields）的视角进行分析。我们认为，本研究的具体理论与整体框架，可为理解超越军事与经济竞争的权力政治运作逻辑提供有效分析工具。