ABSTRACT
China's international roles and its positioning in the international social order cannot be explained only or even primarily by external expectations in the processes of socialization, mimicking, or imitation. Role theory takes processes of self-identification, domestic contestation, as well as several other distinct modes of interaction, much more seriously as causal mechanisms for self-binding behavior by role holders. International roles are primary components of international social structures. Leadership roles are therefore not only more complex and prohibitive in terms of costs for the role holder. International roles and identities differ in important ways. In a structuralist reading, roles are social positions in a group constituted by alter- and ego-expectations of the functions of the role holder for the group's goals. In agency-based readings, roles are behavioral patterns emerging from ego- and alter-expectations. Drawing on George H. Mead's model of self-identification, the nexus between role and identity becomes clearer.
