Cameron G. Thies and Mark David Nieman ask important questions: What distinguishes emerging powers? Does their foreign policy behavior differ from that of established great powers or from rising powers in the past? Is a rapidly growing and increasingly competent China, or any of the other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa), likely to behave as a disruptive revisionist in the global system, perhaps even an initiator of military aggression? The response of the authors to this last question is “no,” and their path to arrive at this conclusion both novel and intriguing.
Thies and Nieman assume that those scholars who fear rising-power revisionism do so out of classical realist (“material structuralist”) leanings, which the authors summarize as a theoretical position that assumes a zero-sum international system that virtually compels any rational emerging great power to challenge the status quo powers, typically through war (pp. 22–25 and passim). Increases in relative power thus are believed to lead mechanistically to aggressive foreign policy (FP) behavior. As a counterpoise, Thies and Nieman propose an alternative theory: In the lived experience of emerging power policymakers, systemic-structural imperatives, while compelling, are mediated and softened through ideas, perceptions, beliefs, and domestic institutions. They then reason that if the pure realist view holds, we should observe sharp breaks in the FP behavior of rising powers, as they adopt novel and progressively more assertive behaviors consistent with their newfound capabilities (pp. 19–38). The authors then elaborate careful qualitative and quantitative methods, operating independently of each other for greater reliability, to evaluate their two alternative hypotheses (pp. 39–59). For states whose material capabilities are increasing, the authors’ H1 predicts abrupt, distinct shifts to higher levels of international assertiveness, indicating the dominance of systemic-structural imperatives, while H2 anticipates a gradual, smooth expansion in the scope of the international ambitions and FP behaviors of emerging powers, suggesting the influential mediating effect of inherited national values, self-perceptions, and domestic institutions.
The book’s qualitative test employs secondary literature written by country experts to identify FP roles discussed or adopted over time. The choices of new FP roles can then be evaluated to determine whether shifts in national role conceptions (NRCs) constitute sharp breaks with past national traditions (evidence for H1) or, instead, substantial continuity along with slow diversification of roles over time, for example, as policymakers incrementally transition from behaving as a great power’s faithful ally to self-assertion as an active multilateralist (support for H2). The quantitative tests examine military conflict behaviors (initiating or joining militarized international disputes) and economic conflict actions (operationalized as challenging the U.S.-led liberal international economic order [LIEO] by means of expropriating U.S. multinational investors, defaulting on foreign debt to American banks, or increasing external capital controls)—once again with the view that H1 predicts distinct break points in FP behavior, as conflict behavior ratchets up over time, while H2 anticipates FP constancy or slow, gradual change.
Each BRICS country receives a separate chapter, referencing a large quantity of useful source material. The findings (summarized at pp. 159–73) support H2. With respect to their qualitative test, the authors conclude: “Overall, we do not find that state [FP] identity . . . moves in lockstep with changes in power” (pp. 163–64). Even more strikingly, they find that the “net effect of material power” in predicting either militarized conflict (p. 165) or economic conflict behavior (p. 167) is precisely “none” or even “negative.” In some cases, that is, enhanced state capabilities accompanied less international aggression.
Rising Powers and Foreign Policy Revisionism is ambitious, informative, and balanced, and it genuinely tries to bridge the increasingly wide qualitative–quantitative divide. I also wholeheartedly concur with Thies and Nieman’s core theoretical assertion that material structuralist incentives to foreign policymakers are mediated through cognitions and social and political institutions. Nonetheless, I question significant aspects of both the book’s theory and its empirics.
As to theory, the proposition that a systemic-structuralist approach necessarily implies sharp breaks in a rising state’s FP behavior (pp. 15, 24–26, 34, and passim) seems unwarranted. Suppose that the extreme form of realism assumed here actually holds. Then, if a state’s relative power capabilities increase gradually (as when a state enjoys a consistently faster rate of economic growth than its neighbors, as has been the case for China), the resulting unmediated, mechanistic translation of greater capabilities into more FP assertiveness also should be relentless—but why not equally gradual? One might expect more active or even aggressive FP behavior over time, but I see no theoretical reason to anticipate sudden changes. In fact, one might argue instead that sharp breaks with past behavior should be more likely when inherited but increasingly anachronistic FP roles, perceptions, and institutions (their H2) tend to block needed change—at least until a crisis precipitates a dramatic shift, as in the well-known “punctuated equilibrium” model. Arguably, the authors have constructed a “scarecrow” version of neorealist theory, the better to knock it down. Moreover, the best-specified systemic-structuralist theories are probabilistic: They do not predict that policymakers in a particular country must or will do this or that, but only that, if they demur, their state eventually will suffer a loss of relative capabilities.
Turning to empirics, the qualitative test, listing more than 60 different FP roles that national policymakers may adopt, and then grouping roles into five categories, from least (Level 1) to most (Level 5) active (pp. 47–49), is extraordinarily complex, seemingly rendering intercoder reliability for anyone attempting to replicate or apply this test elsewhere all but impossible. Many of the decisions concerning which role fits where seem arbitrary. For example, why is “nuclear weapon power” (Level 2) less active than “diplomat” or “global trader” (both Level 3)? Ultimately, I’m unconvinced that this is more compelling than a straightforward historical narrative. Conversely, with respect to the quantitative tests, once one accepts the authors’ theoretical priors, the military conflict model seems solid. For the economic conflict model, I wondered at the decision to evaluate the rising power of each BRICS country (the independent dimension) purely within its home geographic region, while assessing economic conflict (the outcome to be explained) by counting challenges to the global LIEO, as represented by taking actions against US firms, banks, or preferences for capital account openness.
Finally, and with apologies for behaving as a stereotypical case study researcher, I noted that the authors’ list of six (only six?) Brazilian economic conflict events (p. 75) did not mesh with my knowledge of the most important or assertive events in that country’s economic history. The debt defaults of 1930 and 1937 were not unique to Brazil, but reflected the effects of the Great Depression on commodity exporters throughout Latin America. The 1983 event coded as a “default” was actually a debt rescheduling, arguably a cooperative event. There was a brief technical default (no repayment of either principal or interest for at least one quarter) in 1987, not mentioned by the authors, but also essentially unimportant, as all parties understood it to be a negotiating tactic. That the People’s Republic of China had had “only two instances of economic challenge” (p. 131) to the LIEO since 1950 was an even greater surprise.
Reservations aside, the authors have performed an important service by taking BRICS and emerging powers seriously, while attempting, with transparency and rigor, to explain what they mean for international relations theories. Their conclusion, strongly supported by the evidence as they have marshaled it, is the hopeful one that even authoritarian rising states may, if allowed to, make their peace with the status quo.
