Conceptualizing Emerging Powers: The Role of Power, Money and Identity

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Laura Mahrenbach
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 369896954

Emerging power (EP) states such as Brazil, India and China have been making waves in international affairs, and international relations scholarship, since the early 2000s. Despite an ever-growing literature discussing their changing role in the world, little attention has been paid to systematically conceptualizing EP states. Two major conceptual issues are apparent to date. First, the EP concept lacks internal coherence, that is, an understanding of what unites, and what divides, emerging states. This has resulted in numerous problems in operationalizing the concept. For example, scholars have engaged in conceptual stretching to accommodate project-specific goals. Second, the EP concept lacks differentiation. Contemporary scholarship has attempted to distinguish EPs from other types of concepts involving the same states (e.g., regional powers or middle powers). However, few scholars have sought to establish a more basic difference: that EPs are different from established states, such as the United States, to whose position in the world EPs aspire. This project addresses these issues and contributes to the conceptualization of EPs by asking two questions. What characterizes EP state behavior and rhetoric within global governance? And how, if at all, do these factors distinguish EPs from other types of states? These questions will be answered by examining the motivations (power, money) and framing strategies (different identities) of three EPs (Brazil, India and China) and one established state (the US) in three international organizations (World Health Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund) which span diverse issue areas. Combining directed content analysis and expert interviews, this research will produce a novel dataset of government statements at the national and international levels, press briefings and expert commentary which can be used by other researchers to further advance our understanding of EPs in global governance. Second, it will facilitate theoretical advancement by identifying how traditional theoretical expectations of EP behavior relate to their de facto contemporary behavior in global governance. Finally, the research will generate policy-relevant insights into how EPs' rise is affecting global governance as we know it.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants