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Rising Regional Powers and International Institutions: The Foreign Policy Orientations of India, Brazil and South Africa
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2012
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Regime AnalysisEconomic InstitutionsSocial SciencesGlobal SouthSouth-south CooperationInternational PoliticsGeopoliticsPublic PolicyInternational RelationsInternational Relation TheoryComparative PoliticsAfrican PoliticsWorld PoliticsGlobalizationForeign Policy OrientationsPolitical GeographyBusinessGlobal PoliticsAfrican Foreign PolicymakingRegional PowersInternational OrganizationIbsa StatesGlobal TradePolitical ScienceInternational Institutions
Rising regional powers from the Global South confront a highly institutionalised US‑led world order, and scholars identify balancing, spoiling, and cooptation as the main behavioural patterns of such states in international institutions. This study examines how the redistributive ambitions of India, Brazil, and South Africa shape their engagement with international institutions in trade, finance, and security. The authors apply the balancing, spoiling, and cooptation frameworks to analyse IBSA states’ institutional interactions across the three issue areas. Results show that IBSA states exhibit strong variation: trade aligns with spoiling, while money and security reflect both balancing and cooptation, indicating overall integration into hegemonic norms yet simultaneously balancing and reforming institutions toward a South‑oriented sovereign order.
How do rising powers relate to international institutions? At the same time as rising regional powers from the South emerge as key players in international politics, they confront a highly institutionalised world order established and maintained by and for the United States and its allies. Traditional perspectives identify three major patterns of behaviour for rising states in international institutions: balancing, spoiling, and being coopted. This article uses these perspectives to ask how the redistributive aspirations of three rising regional powers – India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) – impact on international institutions in the fields of trade, money, and security. The findings indicate that there is strong variation across issue areas. Trade provides support for the spoiling perspective, while the areas of money and security exhibit aspects familiar both to the balancing and cooptation perspectives. A broader picture emerges of IBSA states' general integration into hegemonic norms and being coopted into existing international institutions, but at the same time as balancing the influence of the established powers and reforming these institutions to conform to a more South-oriented, sovereigntist image of world order.