one-upmanship

The art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor.

They are focused on one-upmanship, which is the essence of a competitive spirit.

[V]arious emirates wanted their own ‘international’ airport, then an ‘international’ harbour, then cement factories, then container ports, then petro-chemical plants, then skyscraper hotels and, most recently, ‘international’ trade centres. […] The impetus for these projects continues to be ‘one-upmanship’ and inter-emirate competition for commercial pre-eminence and regional prestige. […] Outsiders, anxious to win lucrative contracts, have consistently taken advantage of these features of competitive one-upmanship among the UAE member states.

A succession of instances of outdoing a competitor.

I think all readers will be impressed by the manner in which Marwick places his own analysis in relation to previous studies both of sorcery and of conflict in general. His punctiliousness here contrasts sharply with the practice of some anthropologists who, in a contest of one-upmanship, score points either by ignoring earlier work or even by baldly asserting that it was all wrong.

Even these debates rarely constituted an exchange of ideas; they more resembled a contest of sectional champions, or a game of righteous, intellectual, and regional one-upsmanship.