Daniel Flemes

• German Institute for Global and Area Studies

When do rising powers fail to establish legitimate regional leadership and instead face contestation by their regional challengers? This book investigates how and why the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) project leadership in South America, post-Soviet Eurasia, South and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, respectively, an...

How do rising regional powers translate regional military dominance or economic superiority into political leadership, and how do secondary regional powers respond? The chapter addresses these questions in four steps. First, it discusses the evolving International Relations (IR) Security Studies scholarship on contested leadership and identifies th...

Brazil has launched a regional leadership project in South America to strengthen its global position, yet secondary regional powers have contested it through diverse means and to different ends. Among these secondary regional powers, Colombia represents a case of institutional contestation. In this chapter, Flemes and Castro address how Colombia ha...

Current power transitions in the context of China’s rise and US retrenchment have significantly conditioned the forms and effects of regional leadership across different world regions. Against this empirical background, this Special Issue gathers innovative conceptual and theoretical perspectives to study the links between regional leadership and m...

Este capítulo analiza la manera en la que el ascenso regional de Brasil y el contexto de las fronteras han afectado la manera en que Colombia y este país han desarrollado sus prácticas de cooperación en seguridad fronteriza en 2010-2014. Brasil, como potencia regional en América del Sur, y Colombia, como potencia secundaria o de capacidades interme...

Este texto se pregunta si es posible afirmar que, con la llegada a la presidencia de Juan Manuel Santos (2010-presente), este país pasó de emplear una estrategia de hard balancing colateral hacia el liderazgo de Brasil –dada la cooperación militar con Estados Unidos durante el gobierno del ex presidente Uribe (2002-2010)– a utilizar una estrategia...

Emerging powers have tried to build functional regional power bases in their respective spheres of influence to gain support for their leadership projects and representative capacities on the global stage. This has caused diverse contestational responses by secondary powers in different regional orders. In this context, we analyse the shift of Colo...

This article analyzes what the drivers of contestation of secondary powers vis-à-vis the regional power are, differentiating therein between structural, historical, behavioural and domestic such drivers. We argue that in regions characterized by relative stability where major interstate violent conflicts are unlikely, as is the case in South Americ...

The articles in this special issue examine the responses to the rise of new and emerging powers including Brazil, China, India and South Africa across different regions. Rather than focus on great powers and hegemons, the contributors address the contestation between regional powers, and secondary and tertiary states. The contributors address three...

Na última década, mudanças e inovações foram introduzidas nas redes intergovernamentais de política externa. Novas potências como Brasil adquiriram um peso relativo devido ao seu novo status atuando como definidor de agendas, moderador e construtor de coalizões. Esse artigo examina a relevância de diferentes redes de política externa como o Fórum Í...

Rising powers have attracted tremendous interest in international politics and theory. Yet the ways in which secondary powers strategically respond to regional changes in the distribution of power have been largely neglected. This article seeks to fill this gap by presenting a systematic comparative analysis of the different types and causes of con...

In the course of the last decade, the IBSA states (India, Brazil, South Africa) have increased their weight in the shifting global order, particularly in economic affairs. Can the same be said about the IBSA states’ position in the international security hierarchy? After locating the IBSA coalition in the shifting world order, we analyze its member...

The multipolarity of the 21st century is fundamentally different from that of its harbingers because in the past decade change and innovation have been induced through sites of negotiation and by the establishment of intergovernmental foreign policy networks. New powers like Brazil, China and India have gained relative weight thanks to their status...

This Introductory Review examines the major debates concerning the rise of emerging powers in the global system. It points to the fundamental difference between the contours of ascendancy in the first quarter of the twenty-first century from previous historical eras with reference to the number of countries placed in this category, the privileging...

Die sich abzeichnenden Machtverschiebungen zugunsten außereuropäischer Staaten erhöhen den zukünftigen Bedarf an Wissen zu den komplexer werdenden internationalen und intraregionalen Beziehungen. Die Beiträge in diesem Band spiegeln den aktuellen Stand der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion über regionale Machtverschiebungen und die Rolle regionaler F...

The politics of contestation on the part of secondary regional powers such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela towards Brazil as the regional leader oscillate between competition and cooperation, inasmuch as the South American region has one regional power and is a zone of negative peace without aggressive rivalries. The secondary powers us...

Rising powers have attracted tremendous interest in international politics and theory. Yet the ways in which secondary powers strategically respond to regional changes in the distribution of power have been largely neglected. This article seeks to fill this gap by presenting a systematic comparative analysis of the different types of and causes of...

Resumen Este artículo analiza la formación y el proceso sostenido de institucio-nalización formal e informal de la unasur y su Consejo de Defensa mediante el discurso y la acción, conceptualizados como una comunidad de seguridad regional. Se establece que ambos se encuentran al comienzo de un estado «ascendente» y que la intención de los países líd...

In the course of the last decade, the IBSA states (India, Brazil, South Africa) have increased their weight in the shifting global order, particularly in economic affairs. Can the same be said about the IBSA states’ position in the international security hierarchy? After locating the IBSA coalition in the shifting world order, we analyze its member...

Aufstrebende Mächte kooperieren nicht nur bei globalen Klimaverhandlungen. In den letzten Jahren haben sie unterschiedliche außenpolitische Netzwerke gegründet und so ihre Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten in der globalen Ordnungspolitik erweitert. Demnach resultiert der gewachsene weltpolitische Einfluss der neuen Mächte nicht allein aus dem relativen Anst...

Given the importance of the assertion or prevention of regional leadership for the future global order, this paper examines the strat-egies and resources being used to assert regional leadership as well as the reactions of other states within and outside the respective re-gions. Secondary powers play a key role in the regional acceptance of a leade...

This article aims to unfold the Brazilian conception of the future global order located between the extreme poles of a concert of great powers and a multiregional world order. The author demonstrates how Brazilian foreign policy makers contribute to the kind of global order, which offers most room to manoeuvre to the rising power. The foreign polic...

The foreign policy options of Brazil are limited in view of the superior hard power of the established great powers. Brazil's soft balancing strategy involves institutional strategies such as the formation of limited diplomatic coalitions or ententes, such as BRIC, to constrain the power of the established great powers. The BRIC states have been am...

Given the importance of the assertion or prevention of regional leadership for the future global order, this paper examines the strategies and resources being used to assert regional leadership as well as the reactions of other states within and outside the respective regions. Secondary powers play a key role in the regional acceptance of a leaders...

We assume that the ideas, interests and strategies of regional powers are highly significant variables, with the power to influence foreign policy. Yet while comparative research projects involving OECD-countries are fairly common, comparative research integrating developing regions is still rare, despite the fact that these countries are among the...

South America’s security agenda demands the simultaneous management of domestic crises, interstate conflicts and transnational threats. Though located at different systemic levels (national, international, transnational), the three conflict clusters are often interrelated and tend to overlap in the region’s border areas. The region’s policy makers,...

A question of interest to scholars of International Politics concerns the manner in which weaker states attempt to influence stronger ones. This article offers a case study of one recent exercise in coalition-building among southern powers as a vehicle for change in international relations. It analyzes the global interests, strategies and values of...

In the practice of international relations, states can pursue different combinations of foreign policy strategies at different systemic levels. The positions of Southern regional powers such as Brazil, on the one hand, between the centre and periphery of the current world system and, on the other hand, at the nexus of international and regional pol...

This article argues that regional powers can be distinguished by four pivotal criteria: claim to leadership, power resources, employment of foreign policy instruments, and acceptance of leadership. Applying these criteria to the South African case, the crucial significance of institutional foreign policy instruments for the power over policy outcom...

Am 12. und 13. März 2008 haben die drei wichtigsten deutschen außen-und entwick-lungspolitischen Thinktanks, das Deutsche Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), das GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies und die Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) zusammen mit Vertretern des Auswärtigen Amtes, des Bundesministe-riums für wirtschaftli...

How can weaker states influence stronger ones? This article offers a case study of one recent exercise in coalition building among Southern middle powers, the ‘India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum’. The analysis outlines five major points: first, it argues that the three emerging players can be defined as middle powers in order to fram...

Regional powers can be distinguished by four pivotal criteria: claim to leadership, power resources, employment of foreign policy instruments, and acceptance of leadership. Applying these indicators to the South African case, the analysis demonstrates the crucial significance of institutional foreign policy instruments. But although the South Afric...

Since March 2006 Brazil has been the ninth country to control the full nuclear fuel cycle. While the U.S. government bashes the uranium enrichment activities in Iran, it has come to an arrangement with the uranium enrichment in its backyard after transitional diplomatic tensions. As signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Brazil has the right to enr...

Interdependence, collective identities and common institutions are the preconditions for the evolution of a pluralistic security community. While the interaction of the states of Southern Latin America already meets the first two criteria, this article focuses on the third one, particularly the common institutions of the regional defence and securi...

Uma avaliação da cooperação em políticas de segurança realizada entre Argentina, Brasil e Chile na última década demonstra que o nível de confiança mútua é bastante alto. O presente artigo propõe um modelo heurístico para analisar a cooperação entre estados em termos de política de segurança. O modelo sugerido baseia-se em três níveis de análise qu...

Uma avaliação da cooperação em políticas de segurança realizada entre Argentina, Brasil e Chile na última década demonstra que o nível de confiança mútua é bastante alto. O presente artigo propõe um modelo heurístico para analisar a cooperação entre estados em termos de política de segurança. O modelo sugerido baseia-se em três níveis de análise qu...

Especialmente durante os últimos dez anos, delineia-se no Brasil, na Argentina e no Chile (aqui designados como “países ABC” ou “Sul da América Latina”) uma clara tendência de cooperação na política de segurança, fazendo crer que esteja surgindo, no sul da América Latina, uma comunidade de segurança.

In the last decade privatization and liberalization of the telecommunication sectors took place in most Latin American and Caribbean countries. In a brief review an outline of the theoretical discussion about the development of the sector, which mainly refers to the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, is drawn. The main direction of liberalization in...

Brasilien beherrscht seit Anfang Mai mit der Inbetriebnahme seiner Urananreicherungs-anlage Resende II als neuntes Land der Welt den vollständigen Brennstoffkreislauf. Die Regierung von Präsident Lula da Silva verweigert den Kontrolleuren der Internationa-len Atomenergiebehörde (IAEA) die Inspektion der Ultrazentrifuge, die das Herzstück der Anlage...

Brasilien spielt in einer Vielzahl regionaler und internationaler Kooperationsverbün- de eine tragende Rolle. Niedrige Institutionalisierungsgrade sollen Brasília dabei ein Höchstmaß an Flexibilität sichern. Beim jüngsten G-8-Gipfel wurde Brasilien ge- meinsam mit China, Indien, Mexiko und Südafrika per Heiligendamm-Prozess in den Club der reichste...