Is anyone a middle power? The case for historicization

IF 2.2 1区社会学 Q1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

International Theory Pub Date : 2023-07-26 DOI:10.1017/s1752971923000106

Jeffrey Robertson, A. Carr

引用次数: 0

Abstract

What should happen to a concept as it loses real-world application? The concept of ‘middle power’ rose to prominence in the mid-20th century, establishing an influential practitioner–scholarly nexus over the next several decades. This prestigious history came at a cost, embedding three core assumptions into the concept: that middle powers are International in focus, Multilateral in method, and Good Citizens in conduct. While there have been significant attempts by scholars to reform the concept, middle power theory has proven inseparable from these assumptions. In this paper, we examine six middle power states (Canada, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, and Mexico) and show middle power theory no longer helps us distinguish or interpret these states. Changes in the international environment suggest this finding will endure. As such, we argue for the historicization of the concept of ‘middle power’. We conclude by identifying a series of analytical puzzles which researchers will need to address to develop an appropriate conceptual lexicon for theorizing this type of state in the 21st century.

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有人是中等强国吗?历史化的理由

当一个概念失去了现实世界的应用时，会发生什么?“中等实力”的概念在20世纪中期开始崭露头角，在接下来的几十年里建立了一个有影响力的实践者与学者之间的联系。这段享有盛誉的历史是有代价的，它在这一概念中嵌入了三个核心假设:中等大国的关注点是国际化的，方法是多边的，行为是好公民的。虽然学者们对这一概念进行了重大的改革尝试，但事实证明，中等实力理论与这些假设是分不开的。在本文中，我们考察了六个中等实力国家(加拿大、澳大利亚、韩国、印度尼西亚、土耳其和墨西哥)，并表明中等实力理论不再有助于我们区分或解释这些国家。国际环境的变化表明，这一发现将持续下去。因此，我们主张将“中等实力”这一概念历史化。最后，我们确定了一系列的分析难题，研究人员需要解决这些问题，以开发一个合适的概念词汇，以在21世纪理论化这种类型的状态。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Theory Multiple-

CiteScore

6.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Editorial board International Theory (IT) is a peer reviewed journal which promotes theoretical scholarship about the positive, legal, and normative aspects of world politics respectively. IT is open to theory of absolutely all varieties and from all disciplines, provided it addresses problems of politics, broadly defined and pertains to the international. IT welcomes scholarship that uses evidence from the real world to advance theoretical arguments. However, IT is intended as a forum where scholars can develop theoretical arguments in depth without an expectation of extensive empirical analysis. IT’s over-arching goal is to promote communication and engagement across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. IT puts a premium on contributors’ ability to reach as broad an audience as possible, both in the questions they engage and in their accessibility to other approaches. This might be done by addressing problems that can only be understood by combining multiple disciplinary discourses, like institutional design, or practical ethics; or by addressing phenomena that have broad ramifications, like civilizing processes in world politics, or the evolution of environmental norms. IT is also open to work that remains within one scholarly tradition, although in that case authors must make clear the horizon of their arguments in relation to other theoretical approaches.