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This article is about the role the concept of European unity played in the political discourse of Britain's progressive intellectuals between Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and the end of World War II. It argues that the progressives saw European unity in a socialist federation as a way of staving off the disasters of war, the European hegemony of Nazi Germany, the restoration of ‘small states’ in post-war Europe and a damaging post-war rupture between the democracies and the USSR.International Politics (2009) 46, 28–47. doi:10.1057/ip.2008.32 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role played by Canada and its United Nations (UN) delegation in the drafting of the UN's Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. The author describes Canada's as a middle power in the post World War II period and explores some of the factors that informed its stance on the Palestine issue. Also noted are the parts played by Canadian senior diplomat Lester B. Pearson and Supreme Court of Canada Justice Ivan C. Rand.

When, on 23 June 1994, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki announced South Africa's new foreign policy goal at the United Nations as its commitment to being a good citizen of the world, the concept of being a good international citizen (GIC) had been floating on the international seas since 1989. Over 13 years later, how has South Africa played its international role, especially since winning a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2006? South Africa is a young, flawed democracy. It has a great deal of moral authority internationally; it is an emerging middle power in the Global South; and it is a true leader on the African continent and the hegemon in the Southern African region. But is it a good international citizen? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realists characterize the contemporary international system as a field of competing units of various sizes and capabilities, struggling by means of strategies of self-advancement to achieve goals that are sometimes common, sometimes contradictory. The nation-state is the fundamental unit in the realist constellation of actors. Large and resourceful states can achieve their goals through partnership, influence, alliance, demand, and coercion. Small and less resourceful states find the strategies at their disposal more constrained. Hence small states are encouraged by realist doctrine to pursue strategies of aggregation, coalition-formation, and integration. Thus, realist prescriptions for the small state encourage strategies that run counter to the realist explanation of international dynamics. Are realist policy prescriptions for the small state necessarily anti-realist? This paper addresses this question through an analysis of realist theory with respect to the foreign policy strategies of a small Central Asian state, Kyrgyzstan.International Politics (2008) 45, 40–51. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800218 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early 1990s, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments promoted Australia's diplomatic credentials as an activist and independent middle power. Labor claimed that by acting as a middle power Australia was constructing a novel diplomatic response to the challenges of the post-Cold War world. But a closer reading of the official foreign policy record since 1945 reveals that previous conservative governments have also taken a similar view of Australia's place and position on the international stage. This essay traces the historical evolution of the middle power concept in Australian foreign policy and concludes with an assessment of the Howard government's more recent reluctance to use this label and its implications for Australia's future middle power credentials. Although its use has waxed and waned in official policy discourse and it is more commonly associated with Labor governments, the middle power concept itself and the general diplomatic style it conveys have been one of the most durable and consistent elements of Australia's diplomatic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has often been identified as a middle power in foreign policy terms. This article assesses the worth of the concept in understanding the role of Australia in global environmental governance. Using a case study of the role played at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it assesses whether Australia conformed to a classic middle power role, building coalitions as a ‘good international citizen’ or whether its role was more like a veto state, preventing positive change. This is done via a reflection of Australia's Summit priorities and an assessment of its impact over the Summit outcomes. The article shows that Australia was able to offer leadership in certain specific areas, but overall domestic policy preferences, a growing mistrust of multilateralism, and a strong defence of the national interest meant that Australia played the role of a veto state, often in coalition with the United States of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the impact of the market regulatory internationalisation of finance on domestic financial services sector policy-making in Canada and France. It is argued that internationalisation has had three main effects on the way policy in the financial services sector is elaborated. Firstly, the policy discourse is adjusted to take account of new international considerations. Secondly, policy options increasingly reflect the desire by decision-makers to render their national sector more competitive. Thirdly, the scope and influence of policy networks has increased in recent years leading to greater consultation between public and private sector actors in policy development. The article concludes that while new institutional parameters are influencing domestic policy-making processes, medium sized powers like Canada and France whose financial service sectors are closely associated with the United States and Europe respectively, are not constrained by internationalisation. Rather financial service policies are janus-faced reflecting both international and domestic considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a middle power with a relatively short history of framing a self determined foreign policy, Australia has actively sought to engage with both its immediate region and the wider world. Elite agreement on this external orientation, however, has by no means entailed consensus on what this orientation might involve in terms of policy. Consequently, two, often conflicting, traditions and their associated myths have informed Australian foreign policy-making. The most enduring tradition shaping foreign policy views Australia as a somewhat isolated bastion of Western civilisation. In this mode Australia's myth is pragmatic, but uncertain and sees Asia as both an opportunity and a potential threat which requires the support and counsel of culturally similar external powers engaged in the region to ensure stability. Against this, an alternative and historically later tradition crafted a foreign policy that advanced Australian independence through engagement with a seemingly monolithic and increasingly prosperous Asia. This paper explores the evolution and limitations of these foreign policy traditions and the myths that sustain them. It further considers what features of these traditions continue to have resonance in a region that has become more fluid and heterogeneous than it was during the Cold War and which requires a foreign policy flexibility that can address this complex and strategically uncertain environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a pluralist middle power, post-apartheid South Africa seeks to generate successful foreign policy initiatives at bilateral, multilateral and regional levels in order to shape international outcomes. In this endeavour, it has three important political resources — a recognition of its geo-political position and importance as a democratic yardstick and reformer; its acceptance of a transnational, neo-liberal elite alliance and finally, recognition of its leadership role from forces wishing to challenge African political establishments. However, the international and domestic political environment which in the mid-1990s was favourable towards middle-power initiative and reform has narrowed. South Africa's currently ambiguous foreign-policy responses therefore stem from a combination of the growing tendency towards unilateralism at the international level, from regional efforts to neutralize South Africa as a pluralist force — in and around NEPAD — as well as the absence of a national or domestic consensus on foreign policy. These constraints coupled with scarce foreign policy resources may, in the long term, necessitate a fundamental reorientation of South Africa's foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to develop a distinction between emerging and traditional middle powers as a means to giving the concept of a middle power greater analytical clarity. All middle powers display foreign policy behaviour that stabilises and legitimises the global order, typically through multilateral and cooperative initiatives. However, emerging and traditional middle powers can be distinguished in terms of their mutually-influencing constitutive and behavioural differences. Constitutively, traditional middle powers are wealthy, stable, egalitarian, social democratic and not regionally influential. Behaviourally, they exhibit a weak and ambivalent regional orientation, constructing identities distinct from powerful states in their regions and offer appeasing concessions to pressures for global reform. Emerging middle powers by contrast are semi-peripheral, materially inegalitarian and recently democratised states that demonstrate much regional influence and self-association. Behaviourally, they opt for reformist and not radical global change, exhibit a strong regional orientation favouring regional integration but seek also to construct identities distinct from those of the weak states in their region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the development of South Africa as a middle power in global affairs in 2001. Aggregate measures of middle power status; Behavioral attributes of middle powers; Description of the country's foreign policy.

The article discusses the middle power status of Canada following the Second World War. The country's campaign for such status on the United Nation Security Council and advocacy for the functional principle in the various specialized agencies is consistent with promoting its own disproportionate influence in international affairs. The functional element of the human security agenda reinforces the myth that the country's present strength in international relations justifies formal middle-power status. The promotion of the human security agenda is designed to increase the country's status in the international community and allow it to climb into that higher group of powers that has eluded it since the failure to achieve true middle-power status at the end of World War II.

Examines the lessons of Irano-United States relations. Implementation of a post-Cold War American foreign policy; Identification of conditions for the pursuit of middle power policy; Use of the relations with regional middle powers in the foundation for American foreign policy; Facilitation of the spread of democracy by the creation of regional zones of peace.

This article seeks to explain South Africa's ostensible emergence as a middle power. It makes the case for the use of a Coxian-based critical theory perspective, which relates the interrelationship between change at the level of world order, the nature of production and the social forces operative in the middle power's state-societal complex to explain South Africa's increasingly active role in international affairs. Playing a mediatory role helps the South African state make diverse foreign policy goals more compatible and it also goes some way in thwarting criticism levelled at its foreign policy in the state-societal domain. Contrary to earlier theorising about middle powers, this article supports a more recent contention that middle powers act in their own (ie dominant societal) interests. The value of such a perspective is illustrated in the light of current debates about the apparent incongruity of South African foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the transatlantic security relationship during the 1980s. It argues that the relative decline of U.S. power and absolute changes in the postwar international system encouraged two trends among key European middle powers. On the one hand, nations such as France, Italy, and Britain exhibited a new defense consciousness and a new sense of responsibility for national and regional security. On the other hand, Western European governments and publics sought relief in Mikhail Gorbachev's vision of a "common European home" from the problems inherent in the transatlantic security relationship. The tension between these two trends is discussed, and the reasons for the ultimate success of the European home at the expense of a European "second pillar" within NATO are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se presenta un artículo que compara las estrategias de las economías pequeñas y abiertas. Se define el tamaño de las economías con base en su población, se examina específicamente la experiencia comparada del grupo de países que tienen de uno a diez millones de habitantes, entre los que se encuentran los países de América Central, la República Dominicana y Panamá. Se contrasta la experiencia de esos países con la de los más pequeños (de menos de un millón de habitantes) y con los más grandes.

Examines Australian and Canadian foreign policies as examples of middle power statecraft. Usefulness of the concept of middle power in explaining and predicting foreign policy behavior; History of classifying countries according to their power capabilities; Definition of middle power status; Activist phase in the countries' middle power diplomacy.

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This paper develops a set of general prescriptions for the behavior of middle-level powers with modest natural resources. The authors use the case of Japanese energy policy to develop with modest natural resources. The authors use the case of Japanese energy policy to develop prescriptions and demonstrate their feasibility. They do not imply that Japan is an inherently typical middle power, nor do they contend that the policy guidelines they put forward provide a complete explanation of why the Japanese economy has outperformed many others. But they do believe that the Japanese energy case exemplifies what it means for middle powers to come to terms with the post-World War II world, to adapt to the difficulties and opportunities provided by the world market, and to try to shape them in a nationally beneficial manner. Atypically extreme cases can serve to make policy possibilities especially clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reassesses the preparatory negotiations which launched the Kennedy Trade Round (KTR) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), in search of a role for Britain. My purpose is to make two challenges, one theoretical, the other empirical. Theoretically this study questions the predominant focus on the structural power of major states that characterizes the study of international relations in general, and of the GATT in particular. This is a case-study of middle power influence that focuses on the negotiating skills and experience of state-level actors at the KTR. Empirically, I question the generally accepted view that the Anglo-American special relationship was merely a British myth and had no significance to US foreign policy interests in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue including workshop on role of middle powers in international relations, Canada's humanitarian aid policy after World War Two, and book reviews of Mike Blanchfield's "Swingback."

The article focuses on international relations discussed by the Royal United Services Institute of NSW Inc.'s Special Interest Group on Strategy. Topics include a paper by Professor Aaron Friedberg on U.S. policies towards China since the end of Cold War; growth of China's economic power, and its efforts to establish its own competing order; strategic relations among middle powers in the Asia-Pacific; and Australia's efforts to strengthen its relations with the U.S. as well as regional allies.

Abstract This essay aims to discuss the appropriation of the concept of emerging power to the field of international relations, the theoretical impact it inflicts on the discipline, and the duality of its formation as a theoretical category. The adjective emerging has been appropriated into the vocabulary of international relations, but such lexical novelty comprises a debate with earlier theorisations on intermediate states. It is argued that this dialogue between the transience in the narratives of change, brought up by the qualifier emerging powers, and the stasis from the theoretical accumulation on the condition from which it breaks through is a constitutive foundation for the concept as an analytical device for international relations.