Conceptualizing Emerging Powers: The Role of Power, Money and Identity
Final Report Abstract
Emerging power states such as Brazil, India and China have been making waves in international affairs since the early 2000s. Despite an ever-growing literature discussing their changing role in the world, we still know little about the concept itself. What constitutes an emerging power? And how do they differ from other types of states? This project addresses these issues by examining the activities of three emerging powers – Brazil, India and China – in global and domestic economic and digital governance settings. Conceptually, my work underlines the distinctiveness of individual EPs’ strategies and motivations, with Brazil, India and China adopting unique governance strategies to accommodate unique domestic and systemic-structural pressures. At the same time, I establish a degree of coherence in the EP concept by illustrating the combined relevance of material strength, peer recognition and diplomatic ambition for identifying EPs. Diplomatic ambitions to exert more influence on the global stage in particular appear necessary, if not sufficient, for identifying EPs. Finally, I use the identified EP characteristics to differentiate these states from developing countries and established powers. While diplomatic ambitions are a crucial factor differentiating emerging and established powers, material strength also plays a role in distinguishing EPs from developing countries. Empirically, while my research underlines the importance of EPs’ diplomatic ambitions in global economic and digital governance, it also suggests that collective achievement of EPs’ diplomatic ambitions seems increasingly unlikely for several reasons. These include the growing prominence of competitive pressures among EPs; a failure to coalesce in issues areas, such as digital affairs, where the governance landscape is diffuse rather than centered around a limited number of institutions; and the impact of both systematic-structural and individual domestic pressures, which make the political “sacrifices” on which collective EP activism depends appear improbable. Moreover, I find little evidence that digital transformations and EPs’ rise will fundamentally transform global politics, for instance, by engendering power shifts in favor of developing countries or by making global cooperation more effective or inclusive.
Publications
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Conceptualising Emerging Powers. The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy, 217-231. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Mahrenbach, Laura C.
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Dataset: Policy Visions of Big Data in Brazil, India and China.
Mahrenbach, Laura C.; Katja Mayer & Jürgen Pfeffer
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Policy visions of big data: views from the Global South. Third World Quarterly, 39(10), 1861-1882.
Mahrenbach, Laura C.; Mayer, Katja & Pfeffer, Jürgen
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The Promises and Challenges of Digitalization and Development in Major Emerging Markets. Emerging Global Governance Essay. Global Policy.
Mahrenbach, Laura C.
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Dataset: British Preference Formation during G20 Negotiations over Tax Reform: 2009-2013.
Mahrenbach, Laura C.
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The domestic foundations of emerging and established state trade cooperation. The International Political Economy of the BRICS, 57-74. Routledge.
Mahrenbach, Laura C.
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Measuring political legitimacy with Twitter: Insights from India’s Aadhaar program. New Media & Society, 25(10), 2704-2723.
Mahrenbach, Laura C. & Pfeffer, Jürgen
