Content area
Full Text
The concept of 'middlepowermanship,' or middle power diplomacy, was first used by John W Holmes and Paul Painchaud in separate papers presented at a 1965 conference on global development.1 While middlepowermanship has been analyzed by scholars interested in the foreign policies of middle powers, the concept has unfortunately not received the attention or respect from the broader academic community that it deserves due to the predominance of the realist paradigm for analyzing international relations. Realists tend to focus their attention on the great military powers of our world. Other states are often dismissed as "lesser" followers of great power leadership.2
While middle powers have been relatively neglected in terms of scholarship, empirical evidence leaves no doubt that middle powers are significant actors in global politics. To illustrate this point, one only needs to recall Canada's contributions to the domain of peacekeeping or the Scandinavian states' generous donations in foreign aid and development assistance. Not only are middle powers relevant in international relations, they are also capable of exercising effective leadership to resolve fundamental issues in global affairs, contrary to the presumptions of the realists. As I revealed in my recent book The Human Security Agenda: How Middle Power Leadership Defied US Hegemony, middlepowermanship was instrumental for the successful achievement of certain 'human security' initiatives, where focus is placed on the security of human populations rather than nation-states. These initiatives include the formation of the Multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations (SHIRBRIG), the achievement of the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines, the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the establishment of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle.3
This article illuminates some of the dynamics of middlepowermanship. Two central questions are posed: how do the middle powers assume leadership roles in international relations, and what mechanisms do they use to convince other states- even some that are perceived to be far more powerful-to follow their lead? I will answer these questions and illustrate the components of effective middle power leadership by drawing from the aforementioned cases of successful middlepowermanship in the area of human security. Since the development of a middlepowermanship theory depends on the selection of middle powers to analyze, I will begin by exploring the diverse ways in which the...