Asian Journal of Political Science

Vol. 19, No. 1, April 2011, pp. 74
95

Reinterpreting India’s Rise through the

Middle Power Prism
Charalampos Efstathopoulos

India’s spectacular rise in recent years has been the source of hyperbolic theorising and
speculation on its major power status. Middle power theory offers a set of dynamic
analytical parameters which allow for re-evaluating India’s global influence and
identifying both strengths and weaknesses of its power projection and resources. Placing
emphasis on themes of Third World leadership, good international citizenship, multi-
lateral activism, bridge-building diplomacy, and coalition-building with like-minded
states, the middle power concept can encapsulate key aspects of India’s contemporary
agency and account for structural dynamics which constitute a reformist world-view
through the reconfiguration of the Indian state within the existing world order. Overall,
middlepowermanship delineates fundamental continuities in India’s foreign policy
tradition, epitomises India’s existing position in the neoliberal world order, while
providing a good indication of the directions India will take on the global stage in the
short and medium-term.

Keywords: Middle Powers; India; Foreign Policy; Non-Alignment; Reformism; World

Order

Introduction
India has been on a path of forging a high-profile power status since the days of the
Cold War, demonstrating an impressive record in terms of gross domestic product
(GDP) growth, military capacity, high-tech production and exports, labour force
potential, and a rapidly expanding service sector. In what could be understood as a
discourse of hyperbolism, academic analysts, policy-making communities, and
journalists have been quick to note these impressive changes and celebrate India’s
transformation, attempting to estimate the year when, according to different

Charalampos Efstathopoulos is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Politics and International

Studies, University of Warwick. Correspondence to: Charalampos Efstathopoulos, Department of Politics
and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. E-mail: c.efstatho
poulos@warwick.ac.uk

ISSN 0218-5377 (print)/ISSN 1750-7812 (online) # 2011 Asian Journal of Political Science
DOI: 10.1080/02185377.2011.568246
 Asian Journal of Political Science 75

projections of power and growth, India may officially be pronounced as a major or

superpower (Wilson and Purushothaman, 2003; Poddar and Yi, 2007). Hyperbolism
is not limited to India but has also been fuelled in the case of China and the other
so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) states, although in case of the two
Asian giants is manifested with greater intensity (Lloyd and Turkeltaub, 2006;
Mahtaney, 2007). From a critical perspective, this optimism may be premature,
lacking intellectual consistency and depicting a problematic theorisation of emerging
powers. As Payne (2008: 526) has remarked, there remains an explicit vagueness in
theorising the attributes of emerging powers which does not allow us to understand
‘from what they are supposedly emerging or at what point they begun visibly to
emerge, or indeed what it means to emerge’.
Assuming that increases in a state’s material capabilities automatically translate
into increased influence on the global system, hyperbolic perspectives may be in
danger of overlooking historical, political and social forces at the level of both
structure and agency, thus failing to locate India’s rise within a wider systemic
context. It has been suggested in this respect that India’s rise must be assessed in
relation to the extent to which increases in material capabilities have caused an
equivalent transformation in the country’s global influence (Cooper and Fues, 2008).
Moving beyond the assumption that shifts in material capabilities can automatically
trigger a process of power enhancement at the global stage triggers additional
questions on India’s ability to influence decision-making processes at the multilateral
level, its performance in shaping international outcomes and other state’s preferences
beyond its immediate environment, and the degrees of recognition and institutio-
nalisation of its authority and legitimacy within international regimes. Even after
widening, however, the scope of enquiry to include these parameters, ‘the net
outcome is a sense of fluidity with regard to India’s rank as a power and the
conclusion that India belongs to the class of countries that are always emerging but
never quite arriving’ (Mitra, 2003: 401).
To overcome these analytical gaps and capture the often controversial dimensions
of India’s status as a rising power, this article will attempt to demonstrate that India’s
role in the contemporary world order can be optimally asserted by the middle power
concept. The concept allows for distinguishing both strengths and weakness of India’s
globalist agency, shifting the analytical focus beyond material-statistical calculations
to theorise behavioural, normative and ideational parameters. The middle power
orientation has deep roots in the Indian foreign policy tradition, embedding many
aspects of India’s contemporary agency, and providing important indications of how
India will move in the short- and medium-term. Middle power theory allows us to
account for India’s contemporary influence to the appropriate measure, without
assuming a priori short-term ascendance to great power status, and eluding the
teleological assumption that India’s emergence constitutes by itself a process of great
power transformation. Middlepowermanship should not be misinterpreted as static
state taxonomy, categorising India in a group of middle-ranking powers with similar
capacity, but rather comprising a dynamic and adaptable framework which delineates
76 C. Efstathopoulos
the forms of influence India is exerting in the world order while highlighting the
limitations of its transformational agency. In the sections that follow, key elements of
middlepowermanship will be identified to draw the behavioural and structural
parameters of India’s role in the world order. The overall approach taken suggests that
while individual characteristics may constitute necessary but not sufficient indicators
of middlepowermanship, their ensemble can be understood as a strong indication of
a middle power orientation.

Middle Powers and World Order

The middle power concept was originally devised to capture the special role of two
classic middle powers, Australia and Canada, aspiring to pursue a special role in
international affairs that would differentiate them from both great and minor powers,
and has been used in both academic and policy-making communities in these
countries. Its relevance has been broader however as the concept has served as a
critical prism for interpreting the rise of states on the verge of transformation as late
1980s Japan and post-apartheid South Africa, and delineate the limits of these states’
transformational agency (Cox, 1996; Van Der Westhuizen, 1998). The middle power
concept is increasingly relevant as contemporary analyses on the systemic impact of
emerging powers have often over-relied on material capabilities, dominated by the
neo-realist logic of drawing exclusively from indicators such as nuclear capacity and
GDP growth to map the new poles of the world order. Changes in the global
distribution of power however cannot be simply encompassed by the unipolarity/
multipolarity nexus; the institutional and ideational power of emerging powers on
the global stage must also be accounted for (Young, 2010), and in this direction,
middle power perspectives can provide significant insights.
Material capabilities are certainly important in identifying middle-ranking powers,
but do not constitute a sufficient indicator of a middle power orientation. In the
most elaborate statistical definition of middle powers to date, Ping identifies nine
indicators through which middle powers can be most accurately statistically
identified (Ping, 2005). These are: population, geographic area, military expenditure,
GDP, GDP real growth, value of exports, gross national income per capita, trade as a
percentage of GDP and life expectancy at birth (Ping, 2005: 66
72). Ping notes,
however, that normative and behavioural criteria must also be addressed to have a
complete picture of middle power statecraft. Possessing sufficient material capabil-
ities therefore determines to a degree which types of foreign policy are feasible and
what middle powers ‘can do’; they also affect the expectations of other states and
allow middle powers to assess their own options (Stairs, 1998: 274
275). As Stairs
(1998: 275) notes however, ‘having middle power capabilities is a ‘‘necessary’’
condition, but not a ‘‘sufficient’’ one’ in order to play a more assertive role. Cox
(1996: 244) has accordingly stressed that possessing ‘middle-range’ military and
economic capabilities is essential for realising the middle power potential but ‘not an
adequate predictor or disposition to play’ the middle power role. In this respect,
 Asian Journal of Political Science 77

while countries such as South Africa and Iran may be considered as comparable in
terms of material capabilities or regional preponderance, the diverse international
image they project requires for placing them into different categories, with South
Africa classified as a middle power due to the high international prestige it enjoys
after apartheid.
Middle powers are often distinguished from other intermediate or regional powers
possessing material capabilities of the same range from the type of internationalist
influence they are able and willing to exert (Flemes and Nolte, 2010: 5
6). Middle
powers are therefore able to transcend regional boundaries and project a globalist
influence which allows them to shape regime formation and decision-making
outcomes within global governance. Behavioural patterns are often prioritised in
order to identify the special category of intermediate powers which are able to pursue
internationalist policies. Analytical focus is therefore placed on drawing a ‘common-
ality of behaviour’ among states considered as middle powers and identifying those
behavioural parameters which are unique to middle powers in the global system
(Ping, 2005: 51
52). Cooper et al. (1993: 19) originally defined the behaviour of
middle powers as ‘their tendency to pursue multilateral solutions to international
problems, their tendency to embrace compromise positions in international disputes,
and their tendency to embrace notions of ‘‘good international citizenship’’ to guide
their diplomacy’. By performing distinct diplomatic roles such as catalyst, mediator,
facilitator, manager and bridge-builder, middle powers tend to provide forms of
intellectual and entrepreneurial leadership which are distinguished from the
structural leadership of major powers and which allow them to secure niche issue-
areas in international regimes (Cooper et al., 1993: 24).
Middle power altruism in advocating ‘good international citizenship’ and superior
normative values is a contented issue and cannot be taken at face value. Middle
powers may essentially pursue, however, what Black (1997: 103) describes as
‘cosmopolitan interests in a more just world order’, where the middle power self-
interest coincides with the humanitarian principles and collective interests of
progressive international community. The tendency to frame foreign policy in the
context of ‘good international citizenship’ is an indispensable element of middle
power behaviour and may be practiced through strategies such as combative and veto
diplomacy which place moral considerations above the routine constructive
engagement functions that middle powers perform (Cooper, 1997; Lightfoot,
2006). The ability to project distinct forms of leadership and good international
citizenship typically constitute the primary ideational resources middle powers
deploy to generate influence at the global stage.
In order to maximise the bargaining power that they potentially lack at the
unilateral level, middle powers tend to concentrate their functions at the multilateral
level and specifically within international organisations. Multilateralism allows
middle powers to overcome the constraints they face at the unilateral and bilateral
level and ‘punch above their weight’, especially within international organisations
which provide the legal, normative and moral authority to operationalise the
78 C. Efstathopoulos
functions middle powers perform, and facilitate their mediatory and managerial roles
due to institutional structures which promote processes of consensus-building,
diplomatic engagement and conflict-management (Henrikson, 1997). The tendency
towards multilateralism is often interlinked with coalition-building initiatives with
like-minded states expected to generate maximum leverage for the middle power
project. Coalition-building presents an opportunity to exercise strength through
numbers and socialise a number of allies, potentially including other middle powers,
into collective bargaining schemes which allow for greater resistance against the
coercive pressure of major powers. Incentives of third parties for joining middle
power coalitions derive from the symmetrical relations which are expected to
determine interaction among ‘like-minded’ allies and which sharply contrast with
relations of domination prevalent in major power coalitions (Higgott and Cooper,
1990; Lee, 1999: 21).
In contrast to their ability to ‘punch above their weight’ at the multilateral level,
middle powers face complex conditions at the regional level which determine
considerably their condition of middlepowermanship. Whereas traditional middle
powers like Australia and Canada have been relatively more detached from their
regional environment, Southern middle powers are more entangled in dynamics of
regional hegemony and antagonism, and are inclined to provide leadership in
projects of regional integration to manage these tensions (Jordaan, 2003: 172).
Southern middle powers use regionalist projects as platforms for reconstituting their
status and role, and attempt to shape regionalist projects along lines of multilateral
organisation which facilitate the diffusion of middle power activism (Belanger and
Mace, 1997). The regional level may serve as platform for playing the role of bridge-
builder, interlocutor and mediator between North and South, expected by major
powers to act as pivotal peacemakers and peacekeepers, and representatives of the
demands of weaker states within their regional spheres of influence.
The middle power concept allows for greater space for agency as states can
transcend constrains in the distribution of material capabilities through ideational
resources. Critical perspectives have noted however that the shape of middlepower-
manship is greatly conditioned by systemic forces. Although middle power
reconfiguration can be facilitated by structural change as evident by the emergence
of multiple power centres in the post-Cold War era, middle powers do not actively
seek to trigger such a process of transformation and destabilisation from which they
may benefit as middlepowermanship is generally incompatible with systemic
revisionism. The assumptions informing middlepowermanship dictate performing
‘a role supportive of the hegemonic global order’ where conflict mediation is essential
for neutralising crises which threaten system stability, diffusing polarisation caused
by self-interest manifestations, and creating conditions where nations participate in
the management of hegemonic order through consent rather than coercion (Neufeld,
1995). Middlepowermanship may be supportive of the existing order even in the
absence of hegemonic dominance as middle powers may step in to fill the leadership
vacuum and maintain system stability (Cox, 1996: 243). Middle powers therefore
 Asian Journal of Political Science 79

operate as ‘stabilisers’ and ‘legitimisers’ of the world order because of their limited
capacity for effecting structural change and their potential exposure to changes in the
global hierarchy of nations in periods of instability, and because their position of
relative superiority at the multilateral or the regional level propels them to act along
the diplomatic lines of conflict management to ensure the smooth function of the
prevailing hegemonic order (Jordaan, 2003: 166
169).
With preferences for order and stability always applying, different forms of
internationalism may be pursued for different types of middle powers such as liberal,
reform and radical internationalism (Pratt, 1990: 9
10). Western middle powers have
tended to follow a liberalist
accommodative agenda which aims at the eradication of
any revisionist forces against the existing world order, protecting their core position
in the global political economy and neutralising the demands of competing
peripheral powers for the redistribution of existing spheres of influence (Jordaan,
2003: 176). Southern middle powers, in contrast, project a reformist agenda
envisioning the moderate restructuring of the institutional rules and principles of
the global economy in order to improve conditions of their relocation towards the
core of the world order (Jordaan, 2003; Nel et al., 2001). In spite of tactical anti-
imperialist rhetoric, the reformist agenda excludes revolutionary or radical initiatives
which could threaten their own predominance at the regional level and aims to
influence decision-making processes of global governance within the normative
context of the neo-liberal order. Reform internationalism may promote, on grounds
of justice and fairness, the redistribution of income and resources among nations
accepting that the global economy disadvantages weaker states but the implicit
assumption remains that the existing order can be reformed and potentially work to
the mutual advantage of North and South while sustaining global peace and stability
(Pratt, 1990: 9
10).

India’s Middle Power Attributes

Global Influence and Ideational Resources
India’s orientation towards middle power internationalism can be interpreted as
interlinked with an inability and/or unwillingness to match the transformative agency
of major powers. Studies on Indian foreign policy often reach the general consensus
that India lacks the willingness and strategic plan to operationalise and channel
its material power resources in ways that would allow it to act as a major power.
Scholars have argued that despite India’s remarkable rise in material capabilities, its
foreign policy is characterised by a chronic ambivalence and failure to institutionalise
the design and implementation of a great power strategy (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2007;
Mistry, 2004; Pant, 2009; Perkovich, 2003). Tending to follow a reactive and ad hoc
approach, India has failed to devise a coherent strategic world-view of how it can
benefit from its position in the global balance of power throughout the deployment
of its material capabilities, and overcome a crisis mentality where internal and
domestic crises are confronted in retrospect than proactively. At the global stage,
80 C. Efstathopoulos
India’s foreign policy is characterised by an absence of coercive power deployment,
mirrored in the reluctance to marshal material resources to promote national
interests, shape international outcomes, increase its bargaining power, and affect
other states’ behaviour. India’s massive socio-economic problems seem to further
perplex its domestic material base with a vast population increasingly dominated by a
‘polarisation’ trend between the gainers (40 million) and the losers (400 million) of
liberalisation, and major issues such as energy deficit, unemployment, environmental
degradation, rural poverty, migration and HIV/AIDS, posing major challenges in
establishing a model of sustainable development (Kumar, 2008). In short, the
capacity to act as system and rule-shaper through coercive power deployment is
unreflective of India’s agency.
India’s foreign policy framework embodies instead an array of ideational resources
which reflect basic attributes of middlepowermanship, and projects elements of
altruism, exceptionalism, and uniqueness which often comprise India’s primary
influence on the global stage. Non-aligned ideology has historically comprised
an indispensable element in Indian foreign policy, oscillating between variants of
liberal internationalism and ‘norm-driven’ realism (Mitra, 2009). Since India’s
independence, non-alignment and non-interference, as envisioned by Nehru,
provided India with the resource base to act as a middle power, striving to ‘chart a
third way’ between East and West and deploying soft power strategies which allowed
India to exert normative influence on the global stage and which were commensurate
with the country’s limited material capacity (Wagner, 2010: 64). The practice of non-
alignment, however, was to be constrained considerably by the heightening of the
superpowers’ rivalry and the consolidation of alliance systems in the periphery of the
international system (a condition which equally applied to other middle powers).
Indian leaders soon found that the space for Third World adventurism and an
autonomous middle power path was limited to a large extent by the rigid bipolar
structure and India’s own limited capacity. The first major event to set limits upon
India’s internationalist ambitions was the US
Pakistan military alliance of 1954
which essentially forced India to engage with the realities of the Cold War and search
for ways to defend itself within an increasingly polarised environment (Muni, 1991:
863). A second major event to undermine the idealistic appeal of non-alignment was
the defeat of India in the 1962 Sino-Indian border war (Chiriyankandath, 2004: 200).
Against this background, non-alignment, at least in its political dimension, soon
evolved in the context of Indian foreign policy to become ‘a synonym for an anti-
American and a pro-Soviet stance’ (Muni, 1991: 869). This tendency was formalised
with the signing of the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation
(Chiriyankandath, 2004: 199). The assumptions of non-alignment, however, were not
uprooted from Indian strategic thinking and India maintained its ideological
inclinations which resurfaced in various instances such as the condemnation of the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Chaulia, 2002: 219
220).
The end of the Cold War brought under question the assumptions of non-
alignment and signalled the emergence of a strategic world-view among Indian
 Asian Journal of Political Science 81

foreign policy-making circles which perceived that India had to engage in a more
realistic fashion with the global distribution of power to materialise its quest for
major power status. The emergence of a strategic realist culture became particularly
evident with the rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National
Democratic Alliance government (1998
2004) and the adoption of more assertive
diplomatic strategies deemed appropriate to materialise India’s national goals
(Sridharan, 2006: 80). Two particular areas reflect the turn to a realist strategic
culture: the 1998 nuclear tests and the Indo-US rapprochement. The nuclear tests
were largely a result of the way in which the BJP interpreted the international balance
of power and regional security conditions. The perceived failure of the non-
proliferation regime, which aimed to maintain a global ‘nuclear apartheid’ and
disarm India while allowing Pakistan to advance its nuclear capacity, were all
conditions perceived to constitute an extremely threatening environment. The
nuclear tests were also a product of the BJP’s own realist world-view which
discredited the past practices of non-alignment as a self-defeating strategy, and aimed
to restore India’s status through a more offensive stance. The second major shift was
the move towards rapprochement with the United States. Improving relations with
the only superpower with the ultimate aim of forging a strategic partnership was
perceived as the only path that would allow India to increase its diplomatic leverage
on the global stage (Sridharan, 2006: 85). In the post-Cold War period, Indo-US
relations have been steadily improving but never passed the threshold of strategic
partnership and alliance since substantial divergence of interests was evident in
security and economic issues, while cooperation between the two partners was
limited to areas of secondary importance (Hathaway, 2002). A turning point,
however, towards strategic partnership is perceived to be the signing of an Indo-US
civilian nuclear cooperation agreement in 1996, arguably the most concrete
step taken so far in solidifying ties between the two partners (Pant, 2007). India’s
shift to a realist world-view is also reflected in its engagement with its broader region
and its reaching out to pivotal powers irrespective of ideological inclinations
(Kumaraswamy, 2008).
While in the post-Cold War era, India has undergone a process of international
socialisation into realist politics, triggering the dismantling of aspects of the non-
aligned discourse, this process has remained incomplete as the Indian world-view
continues to be shaped to a considerable degree by the normative assumptions of
neutrality (Chaulia, 2002; Mehta, 2009). The normative elements of non-alignment,
as defined by the pioneering figure of Nehru and which envision a global system
ruled by international law, order, peace, stability, justice, fairness, and respect for
sovereignty, continue to shape in various fashions the international agency of
contemporary India, and determine what constitutes appropriate foreign policy-
making, while withstanding revisionist tendencies such as the realist turn of the BJP.
As key middle power roles such as mediator and facilitator presuppose an ability to
maintain impartial and honest-broker status, pertaining non-alignment has served
Indian diplomacy as the basis for asserting a credible negotiator image in
82 C. Efstathopoulos
international fora. In contrast to the limited resources the country commanded
during the Cold War, India possesses today an array of hard and soft power resources,
such as military capacity, an advanced services sector, cultural influence and
diplomatic capital with a diverse number of states in North and South (Jaffrelot,
2009), which allow for the more effective operationalisation of the non-aligned
foreign policy tradition.
Non-alignment forms the normative platform for India to project the status of Third
World leader and act as representative of the interests of the developing world in
multilateral fora. India’s Third World leadership has historically been forged through
initiatives such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the G-77 in the United Nations
(UN) General Assembly, the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development
(UNCTAD), and the New International Economic Order (NIEO), all aspiring to revisit
conditions of deprivation and marginalisation in the periphery. The collective
understandings generated in the global South through such historical and cultural
osmoses socially construct an image as leader of the developing world and ‘voice of the
voiceless’ which allows India to project a moral authority and legitimacy that
transcends regional boundaries (Narlikar, 2007: 989). India’s bargaining tactics
consistently invoke this image, combining a mix of hard-line strategies, G-77-bloc
mobilisation exercises, assertiveness in pursuing combative diplomacy to defend the
interests of the South, and a commitment to Nehruvian values and universalistic moral
against pressures from developed countries, all of which allow India to exert substantial
veto-power by blocking agreements in certain issue areas (Narlikar, 2007). Third World
status also facilitates the diffusion of India’s intellectual leadership by providing ideas
for global governance in the areas of trade, agriculture, development, and human rights
which are widely accepted in developing countries.
India’s ideational resources entail core elements of good international citizenship,
often mirrored in the tendency to project a responsible power stance through
constrained use of military force, emphasis on constructive engagement, negotiation,
and ‘risk-averse’ crisis management, and a willingness to fulfil its expected duties in
sustaining global peace, order and stability (Mohan, 2006: 28
30; Pardesi, 2007: 226).
The politics of good international citizenship is practiced in areas such as
peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and democracy-promotion activism. India’s
steadily pro-active role in UN peacekeeping operations and its commitment in
engaging with the complex conditions of peacekeeping in the post-Cold War
environment emerged as a key aspect of its foreign policy agenda. India’s activism is
particularly evident in its high participation in UN operations and its place as one of
the largest troop contributors in peacekeeping missions, above traditional middle
powers like Canada, Norway and Sweden (Krishnasamy, 2003). India’s involvement
in countries such as Cambodia, Mozambique and Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Somalia
has been conducted in a way which verifies the country’s peacekeeping values in
terms of experience, credibility, neutrality, and humanitarianism, and demonstrates
solidarity with developing nations (Bullion, 1997).
 Asian Journal of Political Science 83

India’s emergence as a prominent donor state in recent years has sharpened the
normative edge of its ‘moralpolitik’, allowing for practicing a diversified assistance
programme which, in the historical context of Nehruvian and Gandhian values, is
well received in recipient countries (Six, 2009: 1115
1117). Repaying a large part of
its debt and becoming a creditor, India has substantially increased its assistance
through the provision of bilateral assistance to neighbouring countries, the creation
of schemes such as the India Development Initiative in 2003, the provision of disaster
relief in cases such as the Indian Ocean tsunami that hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the
Maldives, the hosting of refugees, and the increase of its contribution to international
organisations such the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and UN specialist
agencies (Price, 2005). India’s diversified aid programme has been especially directed
to Africa, promoting energy technical and cooperation through initiatives such as the
Techno-Economic Approach for Africa-India Movement (TEAM 9), cancelling the
debt of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs), and extending collaboration
in the areas of education, pharmaceuticals, and infrastructure (Pham, 2007). Build-
ing upon historical ties of anti-colonial struggles and non-aligned politics, India’s
aid impels a soft power quality distinguished from China’s overt presence in
Africa.
India’s status as the largest democracy in the world is evolving into a key aspect of
good international citizenship, propelling India to act as a force for democratisation.
Democratic advocacy is constrained to a degree by the non-aligned tradition
emphasising non-interference and sovereignty against Western interventionism in the
Third World (Mohan, 2007). It is also filtered through realist geostrategic interests,
especially in the South Asian strategic environment and in relation to Pakistan and
China. India has promoted democratic transition and building in Afghanistan and
Nepal where national interest dictated such action and in Bhutan and the Maldives
where no major interest were at stake, but has refrained from condemning a pivotal
state like Bhurma (Cartwright, 2009). Gradually, however, democracy promotion is
occupying centre stage in Indian foreign policy and, in typical middle power fashion,
is more unrestrained at the multilateral stage. India’s role in democracy promotion is
concomitant to closer relations with United States as evident in bilateral initiatives
such as the Community of Democracies initiative, the US
India Global Democracy
Initiative, and the UN Democracy Fund (Mohan, 2007). The emergence of
democracy promotion in foreign policy agenda can be expected to push India
down the middle power path, not only through enhancement of its image as a middle
power but also through the creation of new possibilities in stepping in cases where US
endeavours have been unsuccessful, and countering China’s influence through
cooperation with democratic middle powers like Australia and Japan (Cartwright,
2009: 424
425). In all three areas of peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and
democracy promotion, self-interest considerations certainly underpin many of India’s
initiatives but the tendency to frame foreign policy in the context of good
international citizenship stands as a core display of middlepowermanship.
84 C. Efstathopoulos

Engaging Other Powers: Bridge-building and Coalition-building

The normative parameters of India’s internationalist agency determine to a
considerable extent its engagement with other powers and its behaviour in
coalition-building. India’s own rapid ascendance has thrown the spotlight on its
performance in the area of great power politics, with analysts focusing on its shifting
relations with major power poles like the United States, the EU, China, and Russia.
Taking into account the wider picture these bilateral relations compose, the
conclusion often reached is that India has achieved an across-the-board improvement
of relations, but has yet refrained from forging solid strategic partnerships, especially
if these are believed to produce an offensive stance towards other powers. India
appears to be stuck in an intermediate position of ambivalence, struggling on the one
hand to reach out for strategic partnerships with major powers but simultaneously
attempting to maintain non-aligned status. This ambivalence is magnified by the
heightened expectations fuelled by external factors such as notions of hegemonic
decline and emergence of multipolarity which, simply put, generate collective
expectations and preferences for a major power role that India is not yet in a position
to deliver (Sinha and Dorschner, 2010). Structuralist-Waltzian perspectives have
accordingly stressed that balance of power equilibria prohibit India from engaging in
definite counter-balancing and band-wagoning power politics with the United States
and China (Rajagopalan and Sahni, 2008).
The optimal path which instead is laid out for India in the short and medium-term
is a diplomatic diversification by performing different and interchangeable roles in
the global system, first, by transcending balance of power politics as promoter of
cooperative security communities in Asia and, second, by carving its own niche in
world affairs as promoter of trusteeship in global commons-type of issues such as the
environment (Rajagopalan and Sahni, 2008: 19
20, 25
27; Sinha and Dorschner,
2010: 99). The realities India is therefore facing allow it to evolve into a ‘bridging
power’ which occupies an in-between position among competing blocs or powers
and operates as ‘the essential connective tissue that a fragmenting world requires’
(Khilnani, 2005: 8
9). Bridge-building is compatible with the Indian non-aligned
tradition which, as shown above, casts a pertaining influence in contemporary Indian
polity and maintains the world-vision of in-between mentality and moving among
competing ideological forces. A contemporary bridge-building power would play a
positive role of constructive engagement and confidence-building, drawing both
from an array of hard and soft power resources such as coercive diplomacy and
persuasive influence. Bridge-building can function as the epitome of India’s quest for
a higher power status, allowing for pursuing the dual strategic objectives of
independence and ‘indispensability’ while fully operationalising its available hard
and soft power resources, and expertise in mediatory diplomacy (Khilnani, 2005: 9).
Indian policy-making circles are increasingly recognising that India stands as a
natural bridge-building force among the Western world and the Southern hemi-
sphere, possessing the moral authority to demand greater justice, equity and
 Asian Journal of Political Science 85

redistribution of resources for poorer nations while commanding sufficient material

resources to influence decision-making processes in global governance (Nafey, 2008).
As India locates its national interest in the middle spectrum in a wide range of issues,
the bridge-building role appears as the strategically optimal choice to take maximum
advantage of issue-area interdependencies and exert maximum leverage. Increased
capabilities in a number of regimes and issue-areas have allowed Indian foreign policy
to adopt the principles of selective engagement where it can ‘pick and choose issues
to champion and impress upon the international community its choices’ (Nafey,
2008: 119). In this process of selective engagement, India learns to increasingly master
a complex form of diplomacy where knowledge, science and technology-based
initiatives, business-oriented proposals, and cultural influence are deployed to project
creative solutions to global problems (Nafey, 2008: 119
121). In other words, the
specific form of ‘niche diplomacy’ that middle powers tend to perform is increasingly
taking shape in Indian foreign policy in both scope and style.
While ambivalence has characterised India’s engagement with major powers, its
relations with states perceived to belong closer to the middle power category have
progressed on a much more solid ground. At the bilateral level, India’s diploma-
tic advancement in improving ties with traditional and emerging middle powers like
Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa has been expressed with much
assertion (Bonnor, 2008; Ghosh, 2008; Hirst, 2008; Rubinoff, 2002; Shrivastava,
2008). Beyond the bilateral level, coalition-building with middle powers has resulted
in a number of significant initiatives which aim to promote reform in international
institutions by combining the bargaining power of like-minded states.
The India
Brazil
South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum established in 2003
provides a prime example of middle power alliance-building, forming a flexible
transcontinental structure for coordination of the three middle powers and sett-
ing the precedence for a new South
South cooperation seeking to reform the existing
institutional architecture (Alden and Vieira, 2005). The coalition’s founding
document, the Brasilia Declaration, reflects basic attributes of middle power
reformism, declaring commitment to sustaining global peace and security through
a reformed UN, recognising globalisation as a ‘positive force of change’ which has
generated growth, employment, and development, but needs to be managed through
good governance mechanisms in order to become more inclusive and equitable
(IBSA, 2003). The IBSA forum also presented new possibilities for containing
hegemonic unilateralism through moderate diplomacy and coordination with
like-minded states (Flemes, 2007), while opening up the path for more effective
coalition-building against developed countries in the Doha Round of World Trade
Organization (WTO) negotiations. The G-20 coalition played a high-profile role at
the WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancun in 2003 as it combined the bargaining
power of leading middle powers from the global South and marked the emergence of
new type of alliance building combining bloc and issue-based diplomacy (Narlikar
and Tussie, 2004). Under the leadership of India and other Southern powers, the
G-20 succeeded in outmanoeuvring US/EU structural leadership and advancing an
86 C. Efstathopoulos
alternative framework proposal of agricultural liberalisation which served the
interests of developing countries in the areas of market access, domestic support
and export subsidies, and exposed the false rhetoric of developed countries. Although
the Cancun Ministerial collapsed, the legitimacy and authority of India and other
G-20 leaders were substantially enhanced, shifting the distribution of power in the
WTO informal decision-making system and augmenting India’s bargaining leverage.
The G-4, finally, comprising of Brazil, Germany, Japan, and India, has acted as an
informal group campaigning for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.
Beyond profile-raising, its success has been limited as it has triggered the opposition
of a number of states while India has shown inconsistency in relation to its demand
for a veto seat and has been unable in this case to rally massive support from the
developing world (Cooper and Fues, 2008: 299
300).

Multilateral Activism and Regional Entanglement

Indian policy-making circles increasingly accept multilateralism as the ideal strategic
level-playing field for realising the prospect of a multi-polar (yet not polarised), post-
hegemonic, inclusive and equitable global order (Bava, 2007). In the words of India’s
Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, ‘if globalisation is the trend, then multilateralism is
its life-sustaining mechanism, for no process will survive without a genuine spirit of
multilateralism underlined by the belief that global problems require global solutions
globally arrived at’ (Nafey, 2008: 115). India’s vision of multilateralism is epitomised
by the UN institutional architecture which is believed to provide the channels for
achieving global order and stability and pursuing a doctrine of multi-functionality
facilitating key objectives such as: encountering new security threats, promoting the
reform of international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and WTO,
engaging with major powers through leverage that would not be possible on a
unilateral, bilateral, or regional level, diffusing aggressive US unilateralism, and
maintaining openness in international economic relations to ensure the steady flow
of goods, services and capital necessary for India’s economic growth (Mattoo and
Subramanian, 2008).
Towards this purpose, India’s multilateral activism is frequently matched by
coalition-building initiatives as shown above which aim at maintaining leadership
over traditional G-77 groupings while forming new flexible alliances with leading
middle powers. Such activism however does not always take the form of full
engagement in the international institutional architecture but is rather characterised
by extensive participation within specific multilateral settings. While India has been
particularly active in the WTO and UN specialist agencies, it has exhibited a reluctant
and more passive or negative position in global regimes in areas such as finance and
climate change, mirroring therefore the tendency of middle powers to secure issue-
areas through niche diplomacy.
India’s multilateral activism is exemplified by its role in the multilateral trading
system. In the WTO, India has gradually been shifting from a defensive to proactive
 Asian Journal of Political Science 87

stance, practicing a bargaining strategy which combines elements of combative

diplomacy, expertise in WTO law and regulations, and cohesive alliance-building
with the global South. During the current Doha Round, India has played a pivotal
role in all major phases of negotiations. In the Doha Ministerial (2001), India acted as
the leading opponent of launching a new round, advocating emphasis on outstanding
implementation issues and blocking the inclusion of new issues in the negotiations.
In the Cancun Ministerial (2003), India succeeded through leadership of two major
coalition schemes, the G-20 and the G-16, to advance a developmental agenda in
agriculture while blocking the inclusion of the contentious Singapore Issues, while
the Hong-Kong Ministerial (2005) saw India together with Brazil relocating to the
very core of WTO decision-making as members of the ‘New Quad’, successfully
performing overall a catalyst middlepowermanship role in North
South rapproche-
ment (Taylor, 2007: 161). India’s growing influence in WTO negotiations has been
characterised by a reformist tendency, internalising and advocating the goals set in
the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and promoting special and differential
treatment, and exercising pressure on the North to eradicate protectionist barriers
and implement the agenda of liberalisation they claim to adhere to.
Contrary to favourable conditions for multilateral activism, India faces in its South
Asian environment complex conditions re-constitutive with its form of middlepo-
wermanship. On one level, establishing conditions of regional predominance by
means of coercion and consent is a default option for Southern powers with global
ambitions. In recent years, India has embarked in a concentrated effort to ‘break out
of the South Asian strategic box’ and establish spheres of influence in the broader
continental area, or ‘extended neighbourhood’, reaching out to Central Asia, Middle
East, the Indian Ocean and the ASEAN states and promoting geo-strategic and geo-
economic interests in trade, energy, military and security issues (Ganguly and
Pardesi, 2009: 14; Scott, 2009). In terms of regional integration, India’s role has been
the catalyst for advancing the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) and its trade body, the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), although
with an often reluctant pace and arguably with less vigour than other Southern
middle powers like Brazil and South Africa in their respective regionalist projects.
While possessing regional power capabilities, India’s physical preponderance
continuously generates collective understandings of enmity and antagonism in a
historically polarised environment. The geo-strategic triangle between India, Pakistan
and China constructs an intersubjective psychology of antagonism in the interactions
of the three states, obliging India to constantly engage in realist exercises of counter-
balancing, military build-up, and counter-insurgency, and often transferring the
realist power game to India’s smaller neighbours.
India’s regional entanglement reproduces a middle power orientation through
negative and positive dynamics. First, India is severely constrained in pursuing great
power politics at the global level as long as it is tied down to a competitive
environment which forces India to focus on regional objectives and distracts
attention from concentrating on formulating a grand strategy. As India appears
88 C. Efstathopoulos
unwilling or incapable of moving beyond ‘reluctant hegemony’ and deploying
its material capabilities to fully resolve tensions in its immediate neighbourhood
and achieve status quo predominance, the fluid regional environment continues to
disrupt any major power aspirations (Mitra, 2003). Under such conditions,
middlepowermanship offers a way out of South Asian entanglement, allowing for
transcending regional power politics through policy-making options that escape the
zero-sum game logic of balance of power politics, and transferring emphasis on
issues, agendas and resources where India has an advantage over its neighbours such
as soft power, moral leadership, democracy promotion, multilateral expertise, and a
distinct cultural quality to act as a civilisational power. Against regional complexities,
multilateral activism may serve to institutionalise India’s pre-eminence at the global
level, consequently generating collective understandings which constitute India as a
credible bridge-builder between the North and South Asia and gaining the
recognition of Asian states that India can act as representative of their interests in
international regimes.

Restructuring and Reformism

The middle power functions analysed so far suggest that India’s foreign policy does
not aim for systemic revisionism and transformation. Emphasis is placed instead on
pursuing a doctrine of reformism which aims at the moderate restructuring of the
world order and its international architecture, resembling in this respect the
fundamental world-view adopted by other Southern middle powers like Brazil and
South Africa. India’s world-view perceives the institutions of the current world order
as representative of an outdated configuration of power constructed in the post-war
period that does not reflect the new dynamics of global governance and the
heightening impact of leading developing countries. As a response, India aspires, like
other emerging middle powers, to promote a ‘new multilateralism’ that encompasses
the rise of the new power centres of the South (Bava, 2007: 6). India can be therefore
understood as a ‘quasi-status quo middle power’ that is ‘not fully satisfied with the
hierarchy of power in the international system, but is willing to accept many of
the parameters of the international order’ (Paul, 2003: 139).
India’s reformism is a product of a long-term process of declining counter-
hegemony. As noted above, India’s non-aligned stance during the Cold War was
constrained to a considerable degree by the rigid bipolar structure and a weak
material base in terms of economic development. India’s stance did entail however an
indispensable asset in the form of projecting a world-view which challenged the US-
led liberal order and its institutional arrangements. For most of the Cold War
period, India’s counter-hegemonic world-view was expressed in the form of limited
integration in the structures and institutions of the liberal economic order, an
ideological adherence to a state-led development model of post-colonial socialism,
and a struggle for political independence in world affairs through leadership of
institutional and coalition-building initiatives aimed to realise alternative forms of
 Asian Journal of Political Science 89

political and economic organisation (McDowell, 1997: 59
63). While the material
gains and costs this approach entailed is a matter of debate, counter-hegemony
allowed India to project an alternative vision of international order which challenged
the very foundations of the US liberal architecture. From the early 1980s onwards, the
ideational and material bases of counter-hegemony were gradually dismantled
through international socialisation to the norms of the neoliberal doctrine and
reintegration with the structures of the global political economy marked by major
international and domestic processes such as India’s participation in Uruguay Round
of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) between 1986 and 1994, and
the launch of economic reforms in 1991 (Ford, 2003; Srinivasan and Tendulkar,
2003). The processes of state restructuring and internationalisation generated a new
diplomatic orientation where the world-vision of establishing an alternative system of
governance was abandoned and replaced by a discourse of active participation in
neoliberal institutions to reverse India’s marginalisation.
In this context of reintegration, India’s behaviour has continued to display an
‘irrational’ and confrontational mentality and reflect an entrenched political culture
of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, producing, as argued so far, a ‘hybrid’
diplomatic behaviour where attempts towards constructive middle power diplomacy
with key powers are mixed with ‘G-77 oppositional middle power inclinations’
exhibiting a defiance for the existing order (Narlikar, 2006; Shaw et al., 2007: 1267).
Hybrid middle power diplomacy essentially mirrors a reformist rather than
revisionist world-view, where aspects of Third World adventurism are maintained
but the fundamental norms and structures of neoliberal order are not questioned.
Even the most renegade attitude as expressed in the defiant nuclear tests of 1998
can essentially be viewed as a ‘demonstration’ to reassert the Indian postcolonial
identity of ‘self-confidence’, ‘self-reliance’ and technological independence through
the diffusion of rising perceptions of insecurity and eroding Indian sovereignty
triggered by processes of reintegration with the global economy (Varadarajan, 2004).
India has historically acted as one of the firmest advocates of global disarmament. Its
nuclear diplomacy has traditionally reflected aspects of middle power internation-
alism on two levels. First, national security objectives should not override but rather
be compatible with the norms of universal disarmament and, second, Indian
diplomacy should be committed towards forging a multilateral treaty ensuring a
‘nuclear weapons free world and non-violent world order’, and should settle for
nothing less (Pant, 2002: 95
96). For this reason, India has constantly refused to sign
the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is believed to legitimate the asymmetry
between ‘nuclear haves’ and ‘have-nots’ (Pant, 2002). India’s critical stance was
reiterated at the 1995 New York conference on NPT extension when it accused the
nuclear weapons states (NWS) of not grasping the unique historical opportunity
given by the end of the Cold War to push for total disarmament (Hewitt, 2000: 34).
When the Clinton administration introduced the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT), India initially supported the idea of prohibiting nuclear tests of all types but
soon ended up rejecting a regime perceived to lack any potential to achieve global
90 C. Efstathopoulos
disarmament (Hewitt, 2000: 34
35). The CTBT appeared to merely reproduce the
existing ‘nuclear apartheid’ since testing restrictions would affect NWS possessing
accumulated databases from previous tests and advanced computer technology to
continue upgrading their nuclear stockpile (Hewitt, 2000: 34). India linked such
ethical arguments to its own national interests by stressing that it was immoral for the
international community to expect India to lower its defence capacity at the same
time when China and Pakistan were free to pursue nuclear build-up (Pant, 2002: 97).
There was also growing frustration with the fact that India was portrayed as a
problematic state despite the fact that it has historically been at the forefront of
disarmament efforts, a fact that all parties seemed to omit (Hewitt, 2000: 35).
For decades, India had ‘managed to walk the tightrope of not signing the NPT but
simultaneously adhering to the norm of non-proliferation with its commitment to
universal disarmament’ (Narlikar, 2006: 67), displaying its ‘quasi-status quo’ middle
power position. The 1998 nuclear tests disrupted this balance and seemed to seriously
damage any potential for mediatory diplomacy on non-proliferation. New Delhi’s
nuclear diplomacy in the aftermath of the tests, however, appeared to regain all
aspects of middle power internationalism as India had now been re-positioned within
the existing status quo and did not seek to revise but rather to participate in the
management of the non-proliferation regime. India attempted to re-assure the
international community that its acquired nuclear capability would only serve for a
more effective role in promoting the NPT, work hard for the complete abolition of
weapons of mass destruction, and ensure that the CTBT would be readjusted to a
more equitable regime (Hewitt, 2000: 33). India’s nuclear diplomacy succeeded in
gaining recognition as a nuclear power despite the initial condemnation, especially
after the signing of the US
India nuclear deal in 2006.
Notwithstanding any such diplomatic manifestations which uphold the emblem of
Third World solidarity and display an inclination for systemic revisionism, India’s
fundamental reorientation toward integration with the neoliberal order and its
accelerating entanglement with the dynamics of globalisation in the flows of capital,
labour, goods and services has signified a material and ideological tectonic shift in
India’s worldview that rejects any discourse of autarky (Kale, 2009). India’s hybrid
diplomacy essentially aims to enhance parts of the existing paradigm by redirecting
flows of trade and investment to the Southern hemisphere and exposing the North’s
hypocrisy for failing to adhere to their own neoliberal dogma through pertaining
protectionist practices. India therefore advances the moderate reform of institutions
to address its developmental needs and those of the global South, with the underlying
assumption being that existing institutions, if reconfigured to the appropriate
measure, may deliver the desired results in development, progress and equality.
While bringing India to a position to promote change from within, the process of
reformism entails increased vulnerability and exposure to the transnational forces of
the neoliberal order, imposing substantial constraints on India’s transformational
potential and locking-in economic restructuring through the integration of the
Indian state with global trade and investment flows. The pursuit of hybrid diplomacy
 Asian Journal of Political Science 91

consequently entails inherent contradictions as it aims to enhance the competitive-

ness of the Indian state through commercial types of diplomacy that respond to the
needs of the restructured state (Sridharan, 2002), but struggles simultaneously to
defend the interests of the deprived Indian population and less-developed countries
(LDCs). As India’s profile of Third World leadership forms the base of its authority
and legitimacy, India is reluctant to abandon it non-aligned posture, being inclined as
a result to constantly reconstitute the middle power orientation. In WTO
negotiations, for example, India has faced the dilemma of pursuing a more aggressive
liberalisation strategy in the areas of agriculture and services while protecting the
interests of its millions of subsistence farmers. While the legal clauses of special and
differential treatment have served as a stronghold against concessions on reciprocity,
India’s relocation to the WTO core decision-making have brought it in an
intermediate situation, pressurised from one side by the United States and the EU
to accept trade-offs as a new and responsible power, while facing mounting
expectations from its developing country allies to negotiate a truly beneficial
agreement for the global South. The outcome is a form of reverse bridge-building
which, rather than expanding the space for middle power diplomacy, results in a
‘caught in the middle’ situation where the political space for the interlocutor shrinks
by the rising and opposing expectations of the North and South camps.

Conclusion
Three reasons can be put forward why the middle power path may be expected to
continue epitomising India’s world-view and diplomatic conduct in the short and
medium-term. First, India’s moral leadership in the global South which derives from
non-aligned cosmopolitanism and good international citizenship serves as the
platform for India’s normative influence and as prism through which India growing
capabilities may be viewed as attributes of a responsible and credible power. As
middlepowermanship allows for fully sustaining this base of legitimacy and authority
while cautiously engaging with the North, India will seek to maintain this balance.
Second, balance of power politics at the regional and global produce multiple stand-
offs and appear unlikely to open up paths towards strategic partnerships and
offensive counter-balancing, pushing India in the direction of ‘playing another game’
altogether where it is possible to transcend material conditions and act through the
norms, values and principles of international society and multilateralism. Building a
good international citizen status facilitates interaction with like-minded Western and
especially Southern middle powers through coalition-building initiatives which
reflect many parameters of India’s own world-view and foreign policy agenda.
Finally, the construction of a discourse of reformism inevitably produces policy-
making platforms in India’s domestic institutions favouring compromise and
constructive engagement, feasible to be attained without massive political costs
only through hybrid forms of diplomacy where conformism and combative
bargaining behaviour can coexist. In a fluid global environment where the major
92 C. Efstathopoulos
issues of development, inequality, and poverty dictate the reform of the international
institutional architecture towards incorporating the values of justice, fairness and
equality, the normative space for the new middle power politics provides in the
foreseeable future an ideal level playing field for fulfilling India’s global role.

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