Johannes Plagemann

• Research Fellow at German Institute for Global and Area Studies

The Indo-Pacific is a laboratory of foreign policy signaling. It has seen a plethora of novel diplomatic phrasings and formats emerging in the recent past – from the adoption of the Indo-Pacific terminology itself, to a series of strategy papers from regional as well as extra-regional governments to varying multilateral naval exercises. Playing hos...

Among the potentially most consequential effects of populism is its impact on countries' international conflict behaviour. However, empirical evidence about populists' approach to international disputes is inconclusive. We develop a theoretical framework focused on mobilization and personalization, which we argue are particularly relevant character...

Multipolarity has ambiguous implications for the legitimacy of global governance institutions (GGIs). Rising powers’ capacity to contest established powers’ agendas prima facie increases the GGIs’ legitimacy by reducing power asymmetries between the North and South. However, according to some, the rise of new powers has contributed to the GGIs’ poo...

This contribution explores the rhetoric of populist governments in their diplomatic interactions. We ask if and to what extent populist governments adopt a more aggressive rhetoric with key international partners and adversaries. In theoretical terms, there are reasons to expect populist governments to adopt a more confrontational way of communicat...

The goal of this article is to explore the role of mobilization in the foreign policies of populists in power. To do so, we focus on the main features and changes of Bolivia’s foreign Policy under its populist president Evo Morales (2006-2019) with regard to its two most prominent conflictive bilateral relations, with the US and Chile. In both doma...

In November 2022 South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol unveiled his country’s new Indo-Pacific strategy, which shares points of convergence with the European Union’s “Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific” and Germany’s “Indo-Pacific Policy Guidelines.” As one of the few liberal democracies in the region, an advocate of inclusive multilater...

Populists in power often resort to the politicisation of foreign policy to generate domestic support. This article explores this process. First, it conceptualises populist politicisation of foreign policy. Second, it develops expectations on how such politicisation will take place: the distinctive features of populism (the intensity of populist dis...

Competing connectivity strategies are a core component of geopolitics in the twenty-first century – from China’s Belt and Road Initiative to Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy. To demonstrate the multifaceted consequences of the new multiplicity of connectivity strategies, we propose a conceptual distinction between two forms of competitio...

This article explores the consequences major power rivalries over connectivity investments have for small states in Asia and thereby contributes to a better understanding of small states’ strength and capabilities in an increasingly multipolar world. With reference to the literature on small states, field work, and interviews, the article explores...

This article situates the international activities of subnational governments in India within the broader political economy of federalism. It argues that the nature and the extent of subnational states’ engagements in international affairs are a function of the partisan political relationship the state incumbents have with the national incumbents....

As populists have formed governments all over the world, it becomes imperative to study the consequences of the rise of populism for International Relations. Yet, systematic academic analyses of the international impact of populist government formation are still missing, and political commentators tend to draw conclusions from few cases of right-wi...

Strong economic growth and assertive political leadership have made India an increasingly prominent player in global governance. Whereas conventional scholarship of India's foreign policy underlines continuity, this article explores how India's self-conception has changed across two policy fields (climate change and maritime security). Adopting a r...

What kind of foreign policy do populists execute once in power? Based on the existing literature, we conceptualize populism as a set of ideas whose two core elements are anti-elitism and antipluralism. From this we develop a set of hypotheses regarding both substantive aspects of foreign policy as well as foreign policy–making processes of populist...

Existing research on exceptionalism in foreign policy suggests a number of confrontational features making it a threat to peaceful international relations. Largely based on US and European cases, and hardly ever taking a comparative approach, this literature overlooks a variety of exceptionalisms in non-Western countries, including so called “risin...

The rise of ‘new powers’ in international politics has been frequently associated with a re-emergence of traditional notions of sovereignty as a backlash against the weakening of nation-state sovereignty related to globalization. We argue that the coexistence of these trends has led to new forms of ‘soft sovereignty’. Soft sovereignty means that ri...

The relativization of national sovereignty is the common empirical denominator of all models of democratic cosmopolitan order. Contemporary cosmopolitans believe that we are actually living through a time in which national sovereignty is being reconfigured and at the same time call for the guided intensification of this process: ‘Applied to the fie...

A brief recourse to Brazilian history suggests three obvious starting points for reflecting on the evolution of national sovereignty from a cosmopolitan point of view. First, Brazil’s colonial heritage, the Portuguese slave trade, and immigration have produced a heterogeneous populace of African, European, and indigenous descent, and national disco...

This chapter provides an empirical account of national sovereignty in transformation in response to the theoretical questions posed in Chapter 1. It does so, first, by amalgamating the trends identified on three levels of analysis in Brazil, India, and South Africa to develop the concept of soft sovereignty. Analytically, I contend that the underst...

Current global affairs are characterized by the interrelation of two megatrends underlying day-to-day political developments, from the management of global financial crises to uprisings in the Arab world to the latest growth records in Africa. These two trends, namely globalization, on the one hand, and the rise of new powers from the non-Western w...

According to Christopher Clapham, ‘[the] era of sovereignty as a universal organizing principle for the management of the global system has ended’ with the beginning of the twenty-first century (1999, p. 537). The future, it seemed, could be seen in the fracturing sovereignties of post-colonial states in Asia, Africa, and South America. Indeed, whi...

Under Nelson Mandela, post-apartheid South Africa was hailed for its progressive stance in domestic policy and its transformational leadership in foreign affairs. Mandela’s oft-cited article ‘South Africa’s Future Foreign Policy’ from 1993 reads like a cosmopolitan manifesto. Globalization is defined as a force for good; economic protectionism is r...

Indian history since independence therefore suggests a number of appropriate starting points for an analysis from a cosmopolitan point of view. The prominence of distinctively cosmopolitan—or, in Indian terminology, universalist—thinkers, from Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) and Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) to Amartya Sen are only the most obvious of...

Rising powers are fundamentally shifting the relations of power in the global economic and political landscape. International political theory, however, has so far failed to evaluate this nascent multipolarity. This article fills this lacuna by synthesizing empirical and normative modes of inquiry. It examines the transformation of sovereignty exer...

Südafrika verfügt als Zivilmacht auf den ersten Blick über nahezu optimale Voraussetzungen, um kosmopolitische Normen in Afrika zu stärken. Der politische Kosmopolitismus sieht in einer gestärkten, global vernetzten Zivilgesellschaft und in starken überstaatlichen Institutionen die Grundlage, auf der Demokratie und Menschenrechte verwirklicht werde...

Die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Mosambik und Südafrika ist vorbildlich für die zahlreichen transnationalen Infrastrukturprojekte im südlichen Afrika, die gegenwärtig wiederbelebt oder weiter ausgebaut werden. Sie sind zentraler Bestandteil der Entwicklungspolitik im südlichen Afrika. Diese Transportkorridore können nicht nur die Entwicklung ihrer Start...