Jordaan 2017

South African Journal of International Affairs
ISSN: 1022-0461 (Print) 1938-0275 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsaj20
The emerging middle power concept: Time to say

goodbye?
Eduard Jordaan
To cite this article: Eduard Jordaan (2017): The emerging middle power concept: Time to say
goodbye?, South African Journal of International Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/10220461.2017.1394218
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10220461.2017.1394218
Published online: 21 Nov 2017.
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SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/10220461.2017.1394218
The emerging middle power concept: Time to say goodbye?

Eduard Jordaan
University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
To deal with the wide range of states that are considered middle Middle powers; foreign
powers, scholars distinguish between traditional middle powers policy; emerging powers;
on the one hand, and emerging, non-traditional or Southern diplomacy; hegemony; liberal
order
middle powers on the other. This article examines the middle
Downloaded by [University of Florida] at 10:19 21 November 2017
power concept in light of such diversity. It rejects middle power

conceptions based on a ranking of size, power or position, on
performing morally commendable international actions, on
playing niche roles in international diplomacy, or on national self-
identification. The article then considers a conception of middle
powers as international stabilisers. The difficulty with this latter
conception is that new middle powers exhibit a counter-
hegemonic streak and a preference for multipolarity. Both of
these are destabilising. The proposed solution is to jettison
adjectives such as ‘emerging’ or ‘Southern’ with regard to middle
powers, to stop classifying mid-range states with counter-
hegemonic tendencies as middle powers, and to restrict the
middle power term to mid-range states that actively support the
liberal hegemonic project.
Introduction
Some scholars are sceptical of the middle power concept. Andrew Hurrell, for instance, dis-
misses the concept as a ‘dead-end’.1 For David Black, there is something irreducibly inco-
herent about the term.2 Others disagree, insisting on the usefulness of the concept.
Andrew Cooper finds that the middle power model is impressive for its demonstrated
capacity for innovation and adaption in the face of faltering unipolarity.3 Daniel Flemes
regards the concept as useful for explaining common patterns in foreign policy strategies.4
Furthermore, some states (South Korea, for example) consciously use the idea of middle-
powership to guide their foreign policies. Nevertheless, even those who favour using the
middle power term recognise that the concept lacks clarity. Indeed, it has become custom-
ary to preface a discussion of middle powers by noting that the concept is itself in a
muddle.
One particular problem is the wide range of states considered to be middle powers.
Hurrell comments that this group is too diverse and common patterns of behaviour
among these states too difficult to identify for the concept to have much use.5 In this
regard, it is worth noting that in their seminal articulation of the middle power concept,
Cooper, Higgott and Nossal confined their study to just two states: Canada and Australia.6
CONTACT Eduard Jordaan eduardcjordaan@gmail.com

© 2017 The South African Institute of International Affairs
2 E. JORDAAN
Recent scholarship, however, has been less circumspect in the application of the term. To
the list of states traditionally regarded as middle powers (eg, Australia, Canada, the Nether-
lands and Sweden), have been added Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia,
Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand,
Turkey,7 Colombia, Iran, Nigeria, Taiwan,8 Chile,9 India10 and Vietnam.11 The consequence
of viewing such a variety of states as middle powers has been, as Hurrell notes, conceptual
incoherence.12
Much of the contemporary literature on middle powers consists of case studies of non-
traditional middle powers; yet, with a few exceptions,13 there has been little discussion of
whether and in which ways ‘new’, ‘emerging’, ‘second-generation’, ‘non-traditional’ or
‘Southern’ middle powers – these adjectives are here employed interchangeably – differ
from traditional archetypes. This article examines the middle power concept, especially
in light of its application to a wider number of states. The first part of the article considers
a number of ways of defining middle powers, and rejects most of them, only to pause at an
understanding of middle powers as playing a stabilising role in the international system.
The article then moves to a discussion of the relationship of middle powers to the US-led
international order where, it will be argued, the counter-hegemonic component of the
foreign policy of many emerging middle powers undermines the notion that such emerg-
ing middle powers are international stabilisers. It would appear that, by including this wide
variety of states as middle powers, a definition of middle powers remains elusive. In light of
this lack of a clear definition, the solution offered in this article is to restrict the term
‘middle power’ to mid-range states that actively work to stabilise the liberal hegemonic
order, which entails a jettisoning of the distinction between emerging and traditional
middle powers.
What are middle powers?

Initial efforts to identify middle powers emphasised that these states lay somewhere
between major and small powers.14 Middle powers are states with mid-range levels of
power.15 There is, however, disagreement over what to include when assessing a
state’s power. In an early study, Bernard Wood identified a set of middle powers with
the intention of examining the roles these middle powers play. Wood recognised popu-
lation size, military strength, ‘prestige’ and ‘influence’ as power sources.16 In the end,
however, Wood settled for identifying middle powers as the countries that ranked
sixth to thirty-sixth in terms of their gross national product (GNP) in the year 1979.
Wood chose GNP as a criterion because it is ready-made and seemingly objective.17
Wood then added Algeria, Iran and Pakistan to his list owing to their ‘special regional
or global importance’.18 By adding three ‘special cases’ to his GNP-based list Wood
recognised that state power cannot be captured through a single measure. Moreover,
if GNP and regional significance are sources of power, then why not include elements
such as leadership, internal cohesion and diplomatic skill, as Holbraad had done?19
Although many scholars have moved away from identifying middle powers on the
basis of state power or position in the international system,20 some still do. In a recent
study, Gilley and O’Neil opt for a hierarchical approach, identifying middle powers as
the tier below those widely considered to be emerging or established great powers
(the US, China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan and India).21 Still, the problem
SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 3
remains: there is no clear answer about what should go into measuring state power and
how to weight the various components.22
There is a further difficulty with identifying middle powers according to some kind of
international ranking. Scholars make these rankings out of the belief that similarly
placed states will demonstrate similar international behaviour. However, one need only
look at the diversity in Wood’s list (published in 1987) – which included India, apartheid
South Africa, Sweden, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and communist states like Czechoslovakia
and China – to see that similarly ranked states can display very different foreign policies.
Gilley and O’Neil’s more recent list contains similar diversity,23 and includes Spain and
Saudi Arabia, Italy and Iran. David Cooper also contends that ‘Iran is squarely a global
middle power’,24 but it is hard to see what Iranian foreign policy has in common with
that of, say, Canada, a country widely agreed to be a middle power.25 In fact, the diversity
problem is worse than these few examples suggest. Ravenhill points out that middle
powers are states that lie between great powers – whether they are ‘established’ or ‘emerg-
ing’ matters little – and small powers. Given the low number of great powers, it means that
at least 180 countries have to be slotted into the two remaining categories.26 In any case,
as should be evident from these examples, a ranking alone tells us little about what middle
powers do or might do.27 Foreign policy does not spring automatically or straightforwardly
from a state’s capacity, power or international position and, as Walt argues, is even less
likely to do so in a unipolar international system.28
Still, many middle power scholars have responded to the problems mentioned in the
previous paragraph by identifying middle powers primarily by their foreign policy
behaviour. While the focus is on international behaviour, these middle power scholars
do retain an implicit, undefined sense of middling power – otherwise the ‘middle’ in
the term ‘middle power’ would become a misnomer. The emphasis on behaviour
rather than on size or power has led to some awkward results in identifying middle
powers. One study, for instance, classifies India as a middle power,29 a country so
large that the only way to regard it as a middle power would be to remove just about
any notion of ‘middling’ size from the definition.30 Similarly, while Brazil exhibits
middle power behaviour,31 scholars can’t seem to agree whether Brazil is too big to
be considered a middle power.32
One variant of the behaviour-based approach defines middle powers as ‘good inter-
national citizens’ motivated by ‘humane internationalism’.33 Evidence of such humaneness
can be seen in the tendency of traditional middle powers to be generous donors of devel-
opment aid, to be active in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping, and to frequently try to
broker peace in situations of violent conflict. Gareth Evans is a prominent exponent of
this view. Evans identifies Chile as a middle power for the moral backbone it displayed
when, in 2003, it used its pivotal vote in the UN Security Council to deny the US a UN
mandate to attack Iraq.34 However, the problem with viewing middle powers as ‘good
international citizens’ is that such characterisations are ‘highly prone to distortions, ambi-
guity and nostalgic mythology’.35 Middle powers have committed their share of dubious
international actions and therefore are not the moral exemplars they are sometimes
claimed to be.36
A second behavioural approach is less interested in the normative content of middle
power action and rather concentrates on the manner in which middle powers act.
Although the limited capacity of middle powers means these states are able to focus
4 E. JORDAAN
on only a narrow range of issues,37 middle powers nevertheless bring to bear diplomacy
marked by ‘entrepreneurial flair and technical competence’.38 The limited capacity of
middle powers also makes multilateralism and coalition-building their natural option.39
When middle powers involve themselves in international problems, they act as mediators,
catalysts, facilitators, managers or bridge-builders,40 their positions marked by a tendency
to seek compromise.41 As proponents of this approach make clear, however, middle
power states do not always behave in the aforementioned ways. They do so selectively,
hence the term ‘niche diplomacy’.42 This points to two shortcomings of this approach
to middle powers: first, predictions of middle power behaviour are unreliable; and
second, it defines middle powers according to a type of behaviour that, by definition,
they exhibit only intermittently.
Drawing on constructivism, Hurrell (2000) has proposed another way of identifying
middle powers. He suggests that middlepowership could be seen as a ‘self-created identity
or ideology’.43 In other words, middle powers are states that view themselves in middle
power terms and whose foreign policy actions are guided by a middle power narrative.
One shortcoming of this approach, however, is that while states like Australia, Canada
and South Korea understand themselves in middle powers terms, there are states that
scholars consider middle powers – Brazil and South Africa, for instance44 – but whose
foreign policy bureaucracies and traditions do not express such self-understandings.
There are also problems with self-definition. Should states that proclaim themselves to
be middle powers – Malaysia, for example45 – be taken at their word or should some inde-
pendent criteria inform our understanding of whether such states are indeed middle
powers? Surely the latter. Simply taking a country at its word would be akin to taking
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at its word that it is a democracy when it is
clearly not.
A fourth behaviour-based conception understands middle powers as performing a sta-
bilising role in the international system. They do so out of enlightened self-interest –
middle powers are motivated by concerns over international instability and feelings of vul-
nerability.46 According to this view, the need for international stability, orderliness and pre-
dictability drives middle powers to try to reduce conflict and to support international
institution-building and adherence to international law.47 In the process, middle powers
often build coalitions and work through international institutions to augment their own
limited power. Middle powers step in to contribute to international order when the
great powers will not and are indeed expected, from some perspectives, to take up
such a role.48
A recurring theme in writing on middle powers is the reduced ability or willingness of
the US to provide international leadership and, concomitantly, the need to involve more
states in the management of international order.49 A dispersal of responsibility makes mid-
range states more relevant than ever. The G20 is the clearest evidence that such an expan-
sion of responsibility has taken place. According to Gilley and O’Neil’s count, 11 members
of the G20 are middle powers.50 As Cooper notes, while the attention falls on the major
powers in the G20, middle powers are the body’s biggest champions and the ones that
in the background work the hardest to make it work.51
Middle powers prefer order and stability, so when international change does happen,
middle powers, according to this view, try to ensure that it happens in an orderly fashion.52
Probably the most significant development since the end of the Cold War has been the rise
of China. The rise and decline of great powers is associated with instability and a growing
likelihood of great power armed conflict. For middle powers, the impetus is to give incen-
tive to China, as in the past with the US, to act through international institutions and to
adhere to acceptable norms of behaviour in international relations.53
Middle powers and hegemony

An understanding of middle powers as stabilisers, however, is undone by the wide range
of middle power responses to hegemony, more specifically, by the responses of many
emerging middle powers. It is possible to discern three middle power postures towards
the US and the liberal hegemonic order. It is in these divergent middle power attitudes
to hegemony that a crucial difference between traditional and emerging middle powers
comes to the fore.
One approach sees middle powers essentially as supporters of hegemony.54 Middle

power conservativism – the desire for stability and the preservation of the status quo55
– has typically meant backing for the liberal hegemonic order and the US. According to
Neack, middle powers are states ‘that make themselves useful to the relevant great
powers in the system’.56 Robert Cox, writing in the late 1980s, sees it as the task of
middle powers to support and legitimise the prevailing international order.57 Middle
powers legitimise the international order by supporting the rules, values and practices
that characterise the particular international system in which they find themselves.58
The legitimisation role is particularly relevant for theoretical perspectives that understand
hegemony not merely in terms of material preponderance, but as also entailing an absorp-
tion of the principles and ideologies associated with a particular world order. While these
principles and ideologies correspond to the interests of the dominant power,59 acquies-
cence from lesser states requires that the hegemon’s preferences appear to match the
general interest and that it makes concessions to weaker states so as to maintain the
sense that the system is to everyone’s benefit.60
A second approach sees middle powers as ambivalent towards the US and its hege-
mony. Cooper, Higgott and Nossal see in the middle power proclivity for multilateralism
and their enthusiasm for international law a search for safety in numbers, ‘not so much
against the predations of enemies as against the overweening embrace and dominance
of great power friends’.61
Both the abovementioned approaches agree that there has to exist some daylight
between middle powers and the hegemon. Even Cox, who sees middle powers as support-
ers of hegemony, claims that middle powers require a ‘sufficient degree of autonomy in
relation to major powers’.62 Evans points out that independence from the major powers
is necessary if middle powers want to act as credible mediators and honest brokers.63
When middle powers find themselves at odds with great powers it is because it is the
task of middle powers ‘to affirm the principle of adherence to acceptable rules and
conduct by all powers, great and small’.64 While such affirmations are intended to con-
strain a great power, they typically invoke the principles of the current hegemonic
order – human rights, multilateralism, democracy, economic liberalism, the peaceful resol-
ution of conflict, for instance – and thus do not challenge the ideas on which an inter-
national order is built. At their most forceful, middle powers seeking to constrain a
hegemon from acting against these norms should be considered at most reformist, and
6 E. JORDAAN
most definitely not radical.65 Despite being ‘occasional counterfoils’ or ‘issue-specific dis-
senters’, middle powers have in the wake of the Cold War, according to these two
approaches, been ‘supporters’ and ‘loyalists’ of the dominant power.66
A third perspective on the relationship between middlepowership and hegemony, in
contrast, sees middle power interest as ‘countering great power hegemony’.67 In this
view, middle powers prefer a multipolar international order because it translates into
more states having an influence on specific issues.68 While the first two approaches dis-
cussed above hold for traditional middle powers, the third approach is particularly appli-
cable to emerging middle powers. Indeed, it is in the attitude of emerging middle powers
towards the US and the liberal international order of which it has been the leader that the
principal difference between emerging and traditional middle powers appears. Traditional
middle powers are ‘committed followers’ of the US and do not in any fundamental sense
question US international leadership.69 Emerging middle powers, however, more fre-
quently resist the US and question international arrangements in a deeper sense than
do traditional middle powers. Elsewhere, this author, in an attempt to distinguish emerg-
ing from traditional middle powers,70 had described emerging middle powers as seeking
‘reformist’, rather than fundamental or radical, change, that is, change that is still consist-
ent with and ultimately still supportive of the current international order and its liberal
character. That summation, however, underestimated how far emerging middle powers
might deviate from the hegemonic order. Black and Hornsby offer a necessary correction
when they point out that the foreign policy of South Africa, an emerging middle power,
has become increasingly ‘Third Worldist’, ‘solidarist’ and ‘revisionist’.71 In other words,
South Africa’s international behaviour has increasingly gone beyond what may be
described as ‘reformist’. The type of foreign policy behaviour that Black and Hornsby
are describing is consistent with the third approach presented here, that is, middle
power behaviour that suggests an aspiration to more drastic international change,
change that deviates from liberal values and that opposes American leadership.
Numerous observers have noted that middle power contestation has increased and
that it has come from non-traditional middle powers. Andrew Cooper remarks that,
unlike earlier periods of middle power activism, there is no longer ‘a strong sense of
like-mindedness based on shared attitudes’.72 Rather, many middle powers now exhibit
a contrariness that jars with the ‘followership’ traditionally associated with middle
powers.73 Flemes in 2007 drew on Pape’s 2005 notion of ‘soft balancing’ to demonstrate
how emerging middle powers even then were trying to frustrate, delay and undermine
American unilateralism.74 Soft balancing aims to delay and frustrate the hegemon’s unilat-
eral actions, and in this sense does not entail a direct challenge to the hegemon. However,
soft balancing also involves strengthening ties among Southern states, with the goal of
shifting the balance of economic power away from the US.75 Such ‘South–South
cooperation’ aims to build a coalition to resist the North.76 As for specific emerging
middle powers, Matthew Stephen notes that India, Brazil and South Africa have become
‘major antagonists’ to the US.77 Turkish foreign policy has left its previous close alignment
with the West towards a greater assertion of itself as an independent international actor.78
Indonesia, in turn, has maintained ‘considerably dissimilar priorities and foreign policy
goals’ compared with traditional middle power Australia.79
Neack claims that emerging middle powers ‘seek fundamental revisions’ to the main
post-war institutions.80 Cooper and Flemes have asked whether middle powers will
continue to work through existing international institutions or whether they will turn to
parallel mechanisms of international coordination.81 In the case of emerging middle
powers, the answer seems to be all three: ongoing participation, clamour for reform
and creating parallel institutions. Take the UN Security Council as an example. Emerging
middle powers have regularly sought election to this body. Brazil, for instance, has
served 10 terms as a non-permanent member. At the same time, middle powers have
been prominent in campaigns seeking various degrees of UN Security Council reform.
South Africa, locked in by the African states’ plan for UN reform, the Ezulwini Consensus,
seeks an expansion of the number of permanent seats with veto power. Brazil, as part of
the G4 (which also includes Germany, India and Japan), also wants more permanent seats
but has given up on demanding a veto for new permanent members. Mexico, South Korea
and Turkey are part of the United for Consensus group, whose proposals for UN Security
Council reform are less far-reaching than those of the G4 and the African Group. As for par-
allel institutions, one example is South Africa’s prominence in setting up the Peace and
Security Council of the African Union.82 One sees a similar pattern of participation,
seeking reform and creating parallel structures with regard to the Bretton Woods insti-
tutions. New middle powers Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and South Korea are all
among the top 10 biggest borrowers from the World Bank.83 Southern middle powers
have long sought reform of International Monetary Fund (IMF) governance, specifically
to have the distribution of voting power in the organisation better reflect the growing
economic power of countries from beyond the traditional fold of the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).84 In 2016, Brazil, as well as China,
India and Russia had their IMF voting power increased; South Africa’s was reduced
under the same reforms. Despite the most recent reforms, developing countries still do
not enjoy voice and voting power commensurate with their economic weight.85 It is
out of unhappiness with their underrepresentation in the IMF and the global role of the
dollar that the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – formed
the New Development Bank in 2014. While, as Oliver Stuenkel points out, it remains to
be seen how different the New Development Bank’s policy conditions, monitoring, and
perspective will be to those of the Bretton Woods institutions,86 the BRICS-bank’s self-
declared aim is for it to be ‘operated … as an alternative to the existing US-dominated
World Bank and International Monetary Fund’.87
Gilley and O’Neil remark that the ‘counterhegemonic instincts of new middle powers’
find expression in resistance to values seen as emanating from the West.88 Voting
records in the UN General Assembly provide a snapshot of such value disagreements.
According to US Government reports on the extent to which countries vote with or
against the US on votes the US considers important for the period 2012–2015, Australia
and Canada had an average voting coincidence rate of above 90%; Brazil and Turkey
were at 47 and 46% respectively, South Africa averaged 30%, Indonesia 28% and India
24%.89
Further along these lines, Gilley and O’Neil observe that, even though most emerging or
new middle powers are democratic themselves and respectful of human rights domesti-
cally, they display a profound scepticism about liberal-democratic values at the inter-
national level. According to Gilley and O’Neil, emerging middle powers show less
commitment to the international promotion of human rights than do traditional middle
powers.90 For instance, in a Canadian parliamentary report on the UN Human Rights
8 E. JORDAAN
Council, established in 2006, the authors complained of the inability of the Human Rights
Council to adopt strong human rights resolutions. The report pointed out that this was the
result of developing countries, among which are various emerging middle powers, consist-
ently voting against the West.91 Specific emerging middle powers have also had poor
records on promoting human rights internationally. On the Human Rights Council,
South Africa and Brazil have had disappointing records, and South Africa and Indonesia
have been particularly prone to defending regimes that abuse human rights.92 Turkey,
while it has never been a member of the Human Rights Council, has been ‘making
great efforts to embrace countries with no democratic credentials and strong anti-
Western stands’.93
Whereas traditional middle powers are not regionally powerful and are often ambiva-
lent about deeper regional integration, emerging middle powers tend to be eager
regionalists.94 Middle powers sometimes use their regional integration to resist the US,
as Brazil has done with the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).95 As Chris
Alden has pointed out, regional organisations in the developing world ‘have not
proven to be effective intermediaries or instruments for promoting compliance with pro-
gressive norms within the global structures of governance’.96 Rather, these organisations
are used as buffers to prevent ‘outside interference’ over regional members with poor
human rights records.
The third approach, which sees emerging middle powers as antagonistic to hege-
mony, is not compatible with an understanding of middle powers as international stabil-
isers. The purported middle power preference for international stability is in tension with
a desire to see the end of the current unipolar order and its replacement with a multi-
polar configuration.97 A unipolar international system, as William Wohlforth has argued,
is more stable than bipolar or multipolar systems.98 A unipolar system is therefore pref-
erable because, as Robert Jervis has pointed out, the gap between the hegemon and its
nearest rivals is so large that world war is at its least likely.99 Great power conflict
happens ‘only if the leader and the challenger disagree about their relative power.
That is, the leader must think itself capable of defending the status quo at the same
time that the number two state believes it has the power to challenge it’.100 To be
sure, as Kenneth Waltz reminds us, unbalanced power ‘is a danger to others’,101 but it
does matter who wields that power.102 As John Ikenberry argues, the US is a ‘liberal
leviathan’. The US-led order is hierarchical, but with liberal characteristics. In this arrange-
ment, the hegemon provides global public goods, provides networks for mutual com-
munication and influence, and maintains and operates within negotiated rules and
institutions that dampen its arbitrary use of power.103 Those middle powers agitating
for multipolarity are seeking to hasten a rejigging of the relative positions of the
great powers. Any transition away from a unipolar system is likely to be deeply destabi-
lising. After all, as Graham Allison has pointed out, over the last 500 years, 12 out of 16
great power transitions resulted in war.104
An understanding of middle powers as stabilisers seemed promising, but the behav-
iour of newer middle powers is too frequently at odds with this conception to be accu-
rate. Before proposing a way to salvage this notion of middlepowership, the next
section suggests that the attitude of emerging middle powers vis-à-vis US hegemony
has a number of deep roots and is not likely to change significantly in the foreseeable
future.
Conflicting attitudes, various roots

Whereas traditional middle powers tend not to challenge the principles of the liberal inter-
national order, the deviations of emerging middle powers, however, run the whole gamut:
support for, ambivalence about and opposition to the principles and the main institutions
of the US-led order. Foreign policy scholars have identified a tension, contradiction even,
at the heart of the foreign policies of many emerging middle powers. While one finds a
foreign policy tradition among emerging middle powers that wants to stay close to the
West, at the same time there exists another that is trying to pull away. Brazil, for instance,
is torn between a historical association with the West and a shift towards a stronger associ-
ation with the rest of the world.105 This meant that not all in Brazil’s foreign policy estab-
lishment welcomed former President Lula’s turn to greater association with the South,
which was seen as the abandonment of a decade’s worth of work on forging closer ties
with the West.106 Although South Africa’s foreign policy has shown increasing solidarity
with the Global South, it retains elements that are ‘Western’ in orientation.107 Indonesia
vacillates between being a Western partner and a ‘problem state’.108 In Turkey, Kemalist
foreign policy was closely aligned to the West, whereas under the current leadership of
the ruling party (AKP), Turkey has moved away from the West and formed a stronger
association with the Islamic world.109 According to Neack, Turkey is ambivalent over
whether it is revisionist or a supporter of the international order and is ‘at best’ an ‘unreli-
able partner’ to the US.110 Despite more frequent episodes of ‘independence’, Turkey has
repeatedly returned to a commitment to the international status quo when its security is
threatened.111
The conflicting attitudes of emerging middle powers vis-à-vis the hegemonic order
have various roots. Janis van der Westhuizen identifies domestic class conflict as one –
emerging middle powers face a choice between economic liberalisation and redistribu-
tion.112 Further, emerging middle powers often presume to speak for the developing
world during engagements with industrialised states.113 Indonesian leaders, for instance,
understand the country’s task as being a ‘bridge’ and as playing ‘a role in mediating and
linking the small and great world powers’.114 Mexico played a very active bridging role
during the Heiligendamm process.115 South Korea, by hosting the first G20 summit
outside the Anglophone world, played up its bridging role by pointing to its own transition
from developing to developed economy.116 However, the adoption of a bridging role
places emerging middle powers between competing demands and as a result they get
pulled in opposite directions. For instance, Burges describes how, at the World Trade
Organization, Brazil built a Southern coalition to help the country get into the room
with the EU, India and US, but once there, Brazil began to ‘drift from the coalition script’
and to suggest to its coalition partners that they should make more concessions, such
as on non-agricultural market access.117 Moreover, association with the South has often
resulted in emerging middle powers compromising on human rights for the sake of pro-
tecting sovereignty.118
Furthermore, in emerging middle powers there sometimes exists a tension between
local values and those viewed as Western. Under the AKP, Islamic influence has become
more prominent in Turkish domestic and foreign policy,119 which meant that Turkey felt
it had to be careful about being too supportive of NATO’s intervention in Libya in
2011.120 Despite being a democracy, Indonesia’s membership of the Organisation of
10 E. JORDAAN
Islamic Cooperation led the country to support a series of resolutions at the UN against the
defamation of religions,121 aimed at restricting speech critical of Islam but seen by many as
undermining and distorting guarantees on freedom of expression in international human
rights law.122 In the case of South Africa, Laurie Nathan has identified a foreign policy con-
flict between liberal values and the country’s commitment to Africa.123
A further source of emerging middle power ambivalence about the liberal inter-
national order is that, despite being constitutionally committed to the protection of
human rights, these middle powers often have considerable internal human rights pro-
blems. This takes emerging middle powers in two directions. One is to strengthen inter-
national responses in order to overcome domestic problems, such as Latin American
support for sexual orientation and gender identity rights in the UN Human Rights
Council where Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, in 2014, were the lead sponsors of
the second-ever UN resolution on sexual orientation.124 Such a move is an affirmation
of the liberal aspects of the international order. However, the other international direc-
tion for emerging middle powers with domestic human rights problems has been to
avoid the issue, as Indonesia has done, so as to not draw attention to their own domestic
human rights difficulties.125
One more cause of foreign policy tension for emerging middle powers is their regional
position. New middle powers are frequently identified as regional powers,126 although
Mexico and South Korea are proof that not all are. In some instances, it is the regional pre-
ponderance of states that gives them the authority to act as middle powers.127 South
Africa and Brazil are prominent regional stabilisers and brokers.128 Turkey has over the
years played a leadership role in its region.129 However, the leadership claims of these
regional powers are frequently resisted by others in the region.130 These regionally power-
ful emerging middle powers are often trapped between international demands for leader-
ship and the need to prove that they are not regional bullies doing the bidding of forces
from the liberal core.
This section pointed to a number of factors behind the conflicted attitudes of emerging
middle powers towards the liberal hegemonic order. The number and nature of these
factors suggest that they are not likely to disappear anytime soon and that neither, there-
fore, are the counter-hegemonic tendencies in the foreign policies of emerging middle
powers.
Conclusion
This article considered a number of ways of identifying middle powers. Definitions of
middle powers based on international rankings of size, power or capability were argued
to be unhelpful because one cannot predict a state’s international actions based on
these factors alone. A conception of middle powers as good international citizens was
said to be problematic because of actions to the contrary. Middle powers have, by defi-
nition, limited capacity for international action and are therefore able to make their
niche or bridge-building interventions only on an irregular basis. Such patchy manifes-
tations of what is supposed to be a defining characteristic therefore leave middle
power theory with weak predictive ability. It was also argued that identifying middle
powers as states that define themselves as such was unsatisfactory because such a self-
description required an exterior understanding of what middlepowership entailed.
The above attempts to define middle powers come up short regardless of whether we are
speaking about new or traditional middle powers. That still leaves the definition of middle
powers as stabilisers of the international system. This definition is problematic because of
the counter-hegemonic – and therefore often destabilising – actions of some middle
powers. Such counter-hegemonic tendencies are concentrated among non-traditional
middle powers. Recognising the problem that such divergent middle power attitudes hold
for the middle power definition, Matthew Stephen asks if middle powers that are antagonistic
towards the US can be considered middle powers.131 We are faced with a stark choice: one
solution, proposed by Chen Zhao, is to regard traditional middle powers like Canada and Aus-
tralia as ‘aberrant because of their close alignment to the United States’.132 Chen argues that
the growing number of ‘unaligned new middle powers’ (for instance, Indonesia, South Africa
and Turkey), should get the middle power moniker instead. Our understanding of emerging
middle powers developed with reference to traditional middle powers, yet Chen is calling for
a total severing from, and abandonment of, this reference point. This approach would entail a
drastic shift in what we understand middle powers to be.
The answer proposed here goes in the opposite direction of Chen: it is to drop adjec-
tives such as ‘emerging’ or ‘Southern’ middle powers from the lexicon, and to altogether
stop classifying middling states with counter-hegemonic tendencies as middle powers. In
effect, this would restrict the middle power term to mid-range states that provide active
support to the liberal international order. These criteria will limit the application of the
term to traditional middle powers and a few others. South Korea is one such state.133
South Korea is a close ally of the US, shares many of the US’s values,134 is active in
global governance, and as an OECD member, has economic interests perhaps closer to tra-
ditional middle powers than many other currently labelled middle powers. Murphy has
noted that Indonesia has become less oppositional in recent years.135 Mexico is another
state that might qualify as a middle power because, even though it is a developing
country, it is reluctant to challenge the principles of hegemony because of the long
shadow the US casts over much of what the country does.136
The proposed narrowing of the middle power term will exclude many of the devel-
oping countries that have come to play a more prominent role in global governance. To
be clear, I do not see the middle power term as an honorific, in the way that being
called a ‘democracy’ might be. After all, being defined as a state that seeks to stabilise
the US-led international order – a middle power – appears condemnable from various
critical-theoretical perspectives. The hope is simply that a more limited application
will bring greater clarity to a term that has become increasingly confused and diluted
as a wide variety of states have come to be described as middle powers. A further
advantage of seeing middle powers as stabilisers is the predictive power of such a con-
ception, helped, no doubt, by the relative ease with which this conception of middle
powers can be placed within either a liberal or a Coxian theoretical paradigm.137
Notes
1. Hurrell A, ‘Some reflections on the role of intermediate powers in international institutions’, in
Hurrell A et al. (eds) Paths to Power: Foreign Policy Strategies of Intermediate States. Working
Paper Number 244. Princeton, NJ: Latin American Programme of the Woodrow Wilson Inter-
national Centre for Scholars, pp. 1–11.
12 E. JORDAAN
2. Black DR, ‘Addressing apartheid: Lessons from Australian, Canadian and Swedish policies in
Southern Africa’, in Cooper AF (ed.) Niche Diplomacy: Middle Powers After the Cold War. Basing-
stoke: Palgrave, pp. 140–41.
3. Cooper AF, ‘Squeezed or revitalised? Middle powers, the G20 and the evolution of global gov-
ernance’, Third World Quarterly, 34.6, 2013, pp. 963–84.
4. Flemes D, Emerging Middle Powers’ Soft Balancing Strategy: Perspectives on the IBSA Dialogue
Forum. GIGA Working Paper Number 57, 2007, p. 8, http://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/
system/files/publications/wp57_flemes.pdf (accessed 3 May 2017).
national Centre for Scholars, p. 1.
6. Cooper AF, RA Higgott & KR Nossal, Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Chan-
ging World Order. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993.
7. Gilley B & A O’Neil, ‘China’s rise through the prism of middle powers’, in Gilley B & A O’Neil (eds)
Middle Powers and the Rise of China. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014,
pp. 1–17.
8. Cooper D. ‘Somewhere between great and small: Disentangling the conceptual jumble of
middle, regional and “niche” powers’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2,
2013, p. 25.
9. Evans G, ‘Middle power diplomacy’, Inaugural Edgardo Boeninger Memorial Lecture, 29 June
2011, http://www.gevans.org/speeches/speech441.html (accessed 3 May 2017).
10. Efstathopoulos C, ‘Reinterpreting India’s rise through the middle power prism’, Asian Journal of
Political Science, 19.1, 2011, pp. 74–95.
11. Gilley B, ‘China’s discovery of middle powers’, in Gilley B & A O’Neil (eds) Middle Powers and the
Rise of China. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, p. 57.
national Centre for Scholars, pp. 1–11.
13. Gilley B, ‘China’s discovery of middle powers,’ in Gilley B & A O’Neil (eds) Middle Powers and the
Rise of China. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, pp. 45–62; Gilley B & A
O’Neil, ‘China’s rise through the prism of middle powers’ in Gilley B & A O’Neil (eds) Middle
Powers and the Rise of China. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, pp. 1–
22; Jordaan E, ‘The concept of a middle mower in international relations: Distinguishing
between emerging and traditional middle powers’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political
Studies, 30.2, 2003, pp. 165–81; Neack L, ‘Pathways to power: A comparative study of the
foreign policy ambitions of Turkey, Brazil, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Diplomacy and
International Relations, 14.2, 2013, pp. 53–73; Schoeman M, ‘South Africa as an emerging
middle power’, African Security Review, 9.3, 2000, pp. 47–58.
14. Chapnick A, ‘The middle power’, Canadian Journal of Foreign Policy, 7.2, 1999, p. 76.
15. I use ‘power’ and ‘capability’ interchangeably. While ‘capacity’ has much in common with
power and capability, I use ‘capacity’ to connote diplomatic resources. Some readers might
seek a clear definition of power. However, I don’t see why this is necessary since the
problem the paper concentrates on is the behaviour of middle powers, not the amount of
power they have. In any case, as Chapnick has argued, any attempt to identify middle
powers according to some material measure (population size, GDP, etc.) would be arbitrary.
Chapnick A, ‘The middle power’, Canadian Journal of Foreign Policy, 7.2, 1999, p. 77.
16. Wood B, Middle Powers in the International System: A Preliminary Assessment of Potential.
Ottawa: North–South Institute, 1987, p. 5, https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/
WP11.pdf (accessed 3 May 2017).
17. Ibid., p. 6.
18. Ibid., p. 5.
19. Holbraad C, Middle Powers in International Politics. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1984, pp. 80–90.
20. The by far most-cited text on middle powers (according to Google Scholar), Cooper, Higgott
and Nossal’s Relocating Middle Powers, explicitly rejects identifying middle powers according
to size, power or geographic location. Cooper AF, RA Higgott & KR Nossal, Relocating Middle
Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993, p. 7.
21. Gilley B & A O’Neil, ‘China’s rise through the prism of middle powers’ in Gilley B & A O’Neil (eds)
Middle Powers and the Rise of China. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, p. 4.
22. Cooper AF, ‘Niche diplomacy: A conceptual overview’ in Cooper AF (ed.) Niche Diplomacy:
Middle Powers after the Cold War. Basingstoke: Palgrave, p. 14; Welsh JM, ‘Canada in the
21st century: Beyond dominion and middle power’, Round Table: The Commonwealth
Journal of International Affairs, 93.376, 2004, p. 586. As David Cooper has observed, there
are ‘no widely agreed metrics within the various literatures on national attributes for how
to measure relative national power, or consequently, for where to draw the lines between
greater, intermediate, or lesser powers’. Cooper DA, ‘Somewhere between great and small:
Disentangling the conceptual jumble of middle, regional, and “niche” powers’, Journal of
Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2, 2013, p. 25.
24. Cooper D. ‘Somewhere between great and small: Disentangling the conceptual jumble of
middle, regional and “niche” powers’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2,
2013, p. 32.
25. For a questioning of the idea that Canada is a middle power, see Chapnick A, ‘The Canadian
middle power myth’, International Journal, 55.2, 2000, pp. 188–206.
26. Ravenhill J, ‘Cycles of middle power activism: Constraint and choice in Australian and Canadian
foreign policies’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 52.3, 1998, p. 130.
27. Welsh JM, ‘Canada in the 21st Century: Beyond dominion and middle power’, Round Table: The
Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 93.376, 2004, p. 586.
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29. Efstathopoulos C, ‘Reinterpreting India’s rise through the middle power prism’, Asian Journal of
Political Science, 19.1, 2011, pp. 74–95; Flemes D, ‘Network powers: Strategies of change in the
multipolar system’, Third World Quarterly, 34.6, 2013, p. 1022.
30. Stephen M, ‘The concept and role of middle powers during global rebalancing’, Journal of
31. Van der Westhuizen J, 2016, ‘Brazil and South Africa: The “Odd Couple” of the South Atlantic?’,
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 54.2, 2016, pp. 232–51.
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19.2, 2013, pp. 286–302; Spanakos AP & J Marques, ‘Brazil’s rise as a middle power: The Chinese
contribution’, in Gilley B & A O’Neil (eds) Middle Powers and the Rise of China. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2014, pp. 213–36.
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Middle Powers after the Cold War. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997, p. 7.
36. Ibid. and Welsh JM, ‘Canada in the 21st century: Beyond dominion and middle power’, Round
Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 93.376, 2004, p. 586.
ernance’, Third World Quarterly, 34.6, 2013, p. 964.
39. Neack L, ‘Pathways to power: A comparative study of the foreign policy ambitions of Turkey,
Brazil, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2, 2013, p. 58.
40. Ibid., and Cooper AF, RA Higgott & KR Nossal, Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in
a Changing World Order. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993, pp. 24–5.
14 E. JORDAAN
41. Cooper AF, RA Higgott & KR Nossal, Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Chan-
ging World Order. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993, p. 19.
Middle Powers after the Cold War. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997, pp. 1–24.
45. New Straits Times, ‘PM: Malaysia must embrace middle power position’, 24 February 2014.
Middle Powers after the Cold War. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997, p. 8; Neack L, ‘Pathways to
power: A comparative study of the foreign policy ambitions of Turkey, Brazil, Canada and Aus-
tralia’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2, 2013, p. 59.
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Brazil, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2, 2013, p. 53
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53. Ibid., p. 834.
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Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 93.376, 2004, p. 587.
1989, p. 826.
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30.2, 2003, p. 167; Neack L, ‘Pathways to power: A comparative study of the foreign policy
ambitions of Turkey, Brazil, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Diplomacy and International
Relations, 14.2, 2013, p. 53.
1989, p. 825.
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61. Cooper AF, RA Higgott & KR Nossal, Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Chang-
ing World Order. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993, p. 116.
1989, p. 827.
1989, p. 834.
65. Jordaan E, ‘The concept of a middle mower in international relations: Distinguishing between
30.2, 2003, p. 176.
68. Ibid., pp. 11–12. See also Stephen M, ‘The concept and role of middle powers during global
rebalancing’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2, 2013, p. 48.
Brazil, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 14.2, 2013, pp.
53 and 59.
70. Jordaan E, ‘The concept of a middle mower in international relations: distinguishing between
30.2, 2003, pp. 165–181.
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an emerging middle power’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 54.2, 2016, p. 154.
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ing World Order. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993, p. 19; Cooper AF & D Flemes, ‘Foreign policy strat-
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pp. 64–8.
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18 E. JORDAAN
pp. 53–73; Flemes D, Emerging Middle Powers’ Soft Balancing Strategy: Perspectives on the
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Note on contributor
Eduard Jordaan is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political Studies and Governance, Univer-
sity of the Free State, South Africa. His work has appeared in journals such as African Affairs, Global
Governance, Human Rights Quarterly, International Studies Review, Journal of Human Rights Practice
and Review of International Studies.

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The emerging middle power concept: Time to say

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The emerging middle power concept: Time to say goodbye?

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Middle powers and hegemony

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Conflicting attitudes, various roots

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