Contributing towards the study of middle powers

This study has made the case for a new approach to explain middle power behaviour in multilateral platforms, focusing in particular on the Asia Pacific. In contrast to views that non-major powers do not matter in international politics, the book has aimed to demonstrate the value of an alternative structural perspective – specifically one based on differentiation – in the study of middle power behaviour, and highlighted how the differentiated structure may interact with power politics to generate middle power behaviour in multilateralism. In turn, such middle power behaviour shapes the environment within which other states operate. Through negotiations of power politics, the outcomes of middle power behaviour are manifested in the dilution of major-power stratificatory forces and the middle powers taking on functionally differentiated roles. This process contributes towards maintaining the relevance and standing of middle powers in regional multilateralism. The book has illustrated this argument by examining the behaviour of Australia, Indonesia and South Korea in the creation of APEC from the late 1980s to early 1990s, as well as in the formative days of the EAS from the late 1990s to early 2010s.

The findings of the book contribute towards two bodies of literature, first, on middle power theory more broadly, and second, on middle powers in Asia Pacific multilateralism. The introduction of differentiation theory to the study of middle powers has enabled the incorporation of a concept which, although implied in many analyses of middle powers, has not appeared to feature prominently in the literature. Indeed, the current position, identity and behaviour approaches to middle powers reflect the notion of differentiation, but do not explicitly theorize it. This gap in the middle power literature is puzzling, given the extent to which the middle power concept is premised on the notion of how such states are differentiated from the major powers and smaller states. By putting differentiation at the centre of the analysis, the book’s framework takes a fundamental aspect of the middle power concept and demonstrates how middle powers could be a distinct category with material and ideational/ social characteristics rarely possessed by other types of states, upon which their behavioural strategies are built.