Entrepreneurial states: A conceptual overview
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702018811813 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Author | John Ravenhill |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
Entrepreneurial states:
A conceptual overview
John Ravenhill
Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo, Canada
Abstract
The emergence of newly prominent participants (NPPs) in global governance has led
to a revival of scholarly interest in the concept of middle powers. Because NPPs do
not share the characteristics of ‘‘classical’’ middle powers, analysts have attempted to
salvage the concept by adding various qualifiers. In doing so, they have further reduced
its analytical utility. The concept of ‘‘entrepreneurial’’ states extracts the valuable com-
ponents of the literature on middle powers while avoiding the problems arising from the
conflation of two elements of behaviour—strategic and purposive. Entrepreneurial
states are countries that seek to gain the support of others in pursuit of their perceived
interests in the international system. They may be supporters of the current system, or
seek to change it fundamentally. We investigate what attributes are necessary for states
to behave in an entrepreneurial manner through studies of both successful and failed
attempts at policy entrepreneurship.
Keywords
Entrepreneurial states, middle powers, policy entrepreneurship, diplomacy, statecraft
The global financial crisis of 2008–2009 substantially accelerated the trend toward
a more variegated international system. The elevation of the G20 to be the ‘‘prem-
ier forum’’ for ‘‘international economic cooperation’’ broadened the spectrum of
states with an institutionalized role at the apex of global economic governance.
1
While the G20 formalized the role of what I will term newly prominent participants
(NPPs) in global governance, their emergence had been evident at least since the
turn of the century. Their empowerment was seen in the veto power that individual
NPPs and their groupings were able to exercise in the Doha Round of World Trade
Organization negotiations, and the enhanced role of new functionally defined or
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(4) 501–517
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018811813
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Corresponding author:
John Ravenhill, Balsillie School of International Affairs, 67 Erb Street West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6C2,
Canada.
Email: jravenhill@thebsia.ca
1. G20, ‘‘G20 Leaders Statement: The Pittsburgh Summit,’’ G20 Information Centre, University of
Toronto, http://www.g20.utoronto.ca/2009/2009communique0925.html (accessed 2 October 2018).
geographically based associations of emerging economies. The increasing import-
ance of networked governance and the process of what Eric Helleiner has termed
‘‘cooperative decentralization’’ have further enhanced the role of some NPPs, as
governance in various issue areas has been increasingly shared between regional
and global institutions.
2
The emergence of NPPs perhaps inevitably led to a revival of scholarly inter-
est in the concept of middle powers. But because many of the NPPs do not conform
to some of the characteristics of the countries on which much of the discussion of
middle powers had previously been based, the recent literature has focused on what
Sean Burges has aptly termed ‘‘middle powers with adjectives.’’
3
These delimiters
have included ‘‘emerging’’ (Jordaan), ‘‘rising’’ (Cooper), ‘‘traditional’’
(Robertson), ‘‘Northern’’ (Abdenur and Gana) and ‘‘regional’’ (Nolte) middle
powers.
4
As Burges, adopting Sartori’s terminology, notes, by adding these adjec-
tives analysts have engaged in a process of ‘‘conceptual stretching.’’
5
In this pro-
cess, they have brought further confusion to what was already a contested concept.
Moreover, while the governments of some NPPs, most notably the Republic of
Korea, at times have actively embraced the concept of middle power, others have
strongly denied that they either are, or aspire to be perceived as, a middle power—a
further reason to question the applicability of the concept to many NPPs.
6
2. Eric Helleiner, ‘‘Legacies of the 2008 crisis for global financial governance,’’ Global Summitry 2, no.
1 (2016): 1–12. See also Andrew F. Cooper and Richard Stubbs, ‘‘Contending regionalisms: Hubs
and challengers in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific,’’ The Pacific Review 30, no. 5 (2017): 615–632;
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Emilie M. Hafner-Burton,
Miles Kahler, and Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘‘Network analysis for international relations,’’
International Organization 63, no. 3 (2009): 559–592. And, although our focus is exclusively on
states, we should note that the increasingly variegated architecture of global governance has
afforded new opportunities for non-state actors to act entrepreneurially. Rodney Bruce Hall and
Thomas J. Biersteker, eds., The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002); Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell,
Who Governs the Globe? (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); A. Claire
Cutler, Virginia Haufler, and Tony Porter, eds., Private Authority and International Affairs (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1999); Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods, eds., The Politics of
Global Regulation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
3. Sean Burges, ‘‘Mistaking Brazil as a middle power,’’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research
19, no. 2 (2013): 286–302.
4. Eduard Jordaan, ‘‘The concept of a middle power in international relations: Distinguishing between
emerging and traditional middle powers,’’ Politikon 30, no. 2 (2003): 165–181; Andrew F. Cooper,
‘‘Squeezed or revitalised? Middle powers, the G20 and the evolution of global governance,’’ Third
World Quarterly 34, no. 6 (2013): 963–984; Jeffrey Robertson, ‘‘South Korea as a middle power:
Capacity, behavior, and now opportunity,’’ International Journal of Korean Unification Studies 16,
no. 1 (2007): 151–174; Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Carlos Frederico Pereira da Silva Gama,
‘‘Triggering the norms cascade: Brazil’s initiatives for curbing electronic espionage,’’ Global
Governance 21 (2015): 455–474; Detlef Nolte, ‘‘How to compare regional powers: Analytical con-
cepts and research topics,’’ Review of International Studies 36, no. 4 (2010): 881–901.
5. Burges, ‘‘Mistaking Brazil as a middle power,’’ 287; Giovanni Sartori, ‘‘Concept misformation in
comparative politics,’’ American Political Science Review 64, no. 4 (1970): 1033–1053.
6. Sook Jong Lee, ed. Transforming Global Governance with Middle Power Diplomacy: South Korea’s
Role in the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Scott A. Snyder et al., ‘‘Middle
power Korea: Contributions to the global agenda,’’ Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 2015,
https://www.cfr.org/report/middle-power-korea (accessed 4 August 2017); Sung-Mi Kim,
502 International Journal 73(4)
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