Rising Powers and State Transformation: (ThirdWorlds)

Rising Powers and State Transformation advances the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a useful lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation, with chapters dedicated to China, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The volume breaks with the prevalent tendency in International Relations (IR) scholarship to treat rising powers as unitary actors in international politics. Although a neat demarcation of the domestic and international domains, on which the notion of unitary agency is premised, has always been a myth, these states’ uneven integration into the global political economy has eroded this perspective’s empirical purchase considerably. Instead, this volume employs the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation. State transformation refers to the pluralisation of cross-border state agency via contested and uneven processes of fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of state apparatuses. The volume demonstrates the significance of state transformation processes for explaining some of these states’ key foreign policy agendas, and outlines the implications for the wider field in IR. With chapters dedicated to all of today’s most important rising power states, Rising Powers and State Transformation will be of great interest to scholars of IR, international politics and foreign policy. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Reframing the rising powers debate: state transformation and foreign policy Shahar Hameiri, Lee Jones and John Heathershaw 1. Understanding China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’: beyond ‘grand strategy’ to a state transformation analysis Lee Jones and Jinghan Zeng 2. Centred discourse, decentred practice: the relational production of Russian and Chinese ‘rising’ power in Central Asia John Heathershaw, Catherine Owen and Alexander Cooley 3. State transformation goes nuclear: Chinese National Nuclear Companies’ expansion into Europe Biao Zhang 4. Coordination and control in Russia’s foreign policy: travails of Putin’s curators in the near abroad Daria Isachenko 5. Peacebuilding think tanks, Indian foreign policy and the Kashmir conflict Stuti Bhatnagar and Priya Chacko 6. Can constituent states influence foreign and security policy? Coalitional dynamics in India Madhan Mohan Jaganathan 7. From centralisation to fragmentation and back again: the role of non-state actors in Brazil’s transformed foreign policy Daniel Cardoso 8. State transformation and cross-border regionalism in Indonesia’s periphery: contesting the centre Moch Faisal Karim 9. Beyond royal politics: state transformation and foreign policy in Saudi Arabia Babak Mohammadzadeh

About the Author :
Shahar Hameiri is Associate Professor of International Politics in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. Lee Jones is Reader in International Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London. John Heathershaw is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics, University of Exeter.