The regional powers research program: a new way forward

This introduction to our special issue on Revisiting Regional Powers examines ways in which the study of regional powers can enhance our ability to understand the dynamic nature of the international system today. The article, first, summarizes and highlights how the study of regional powers remains relevant to the broader discipline of international relations but also indicates that there remains much to improve and investigate, for instance by more systematically including less traditional issue areas for regional power engagement, including the environment or public diplomacy, by integrating disciplines beyond IR, including sociological and linguistic approaches. In today’s shifting global order, researching regional powerhood is needed for a better understanding of the emergence of order(s); by highlighting, for example, less-than-global forms of cooperation and conflict, and their often-complex simultaneities. We highlight the need to investigate forms of power beyond increases in military and economic power, but also to expand the types of actors beyond the state that we consider taking on functions of regional powerhood.