Rising regional powers and international institutions: the foreign policy orientations of India, Brazil and South Africa

Whilst rising 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 powers in international institutions: balancing, spoiling, and being co-opted. 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 co-optation perspectives, according to the article prepared for the International Studies Association’s Asia-Pacific Regional Section Inaugural Conference, held in Australia, 2011.