Reluctance in international politics: A conceptualization
| Author | Sandra Destradi |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066116653665 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116653665
European Journal of
International Relations
2017, Vol. 23(2) 315 –340
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066116653665
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Reluctance in international
politics: A conceptualization
Sandra Destradi
Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg and GIGA German Institute
of Global and Area Studies, Germany
Abstract
Contemporary rising powers have often pursued a hesitant and ambiguous foreign-
policy and have belied the expectations of potential followers and established powers
who would want them to engage more actively in global and regional governance. The
existing analytical toolbox of International Relations does not offer suitable concepts to
make sense of the widespread phenomenon of states that pursue hesitant, inconsistent
courses of action and do not bring to bear their power resources to coherently
manage international crises that potentially affect them. A notion that is frequently
employed to describe this peculiar type of foreign policy is that of ‘reluctance’, but
this concept has not been systematically defined, discussed or theorized. This article
aims to introduce the concept of reluctance into the field of International Relations. It
develops a conceptualization of reluctance by identifying the concept’s semantic field and
discussing how reluctance relates to the similar but distinct notions of exceptionalism,
isolationism, under-aggression and under-balancing (concept reconstruction); on that
basis, the article outlines the constitutive dimensions of reluctance — hesitation and
recalcitrance — and their operationalization (concept building). Several illustrative
cases of (non-)reluctant rising powers are used to exemplify the concept structure and
to show the analytical usefulness of the concept of reluctance, which refers to a distinct
set of phenomena that are not addressed by other concepts in International Relations.
An application of the concept allows us to identify policy shifts and differences across
issue areas, as well as open up avenues for further research.
Keywords
Foreign policy, governance, International Relations, power, reluctance, rising powers
Corresponding author:
Sandra Destradi, Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg,
Holstenhofweg 85, 22043 Hamburg, Germany and GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies,
Institute of Asian Studies, Rothenbaumchaussee 32, 20148 Hamburg, Germany.
Email: sandra.destradi@giga-hamburg.de
653665EJT0010.1177/1354066116653665European Journal of International RelationsDestradi
research-article2016
Article
316 European Journal of International Relations 23(2)
Introduction
While the world seems to have become increasingly conflict-ridden and unpredictable,
both established and rising powers frequently do not live up to the expectations of those
who want them to provide leadership, order, governance and the management of interna-
tional crises (Schweller, 2014). While the US has been increasingly preoccupied with
domestic problems over the past years, rising powers like India, Brazil, China or South
Africa have not displayed a readiness to step into the fray and contribute to the provision
of order beyond a certain point. The 2015 climate summit of Paris was successfully con-
cluded with an agreement, but rising powers continue to have strong reservations about
binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions. In 2011, rising powers did not veto United
Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 on the protection of civilians in
Libya, but they did not engage in stabilization efforts in the Middle East and North Africa
either. Furthermore, even in their own regions, where they have a long history of engage-
ment and where their predominance is unequivocal, rising powers have pursued ambiva-
lent and indecisive foreign policies. Brazil, for example, has at times been proactive in
dealing with South American countries, for instance, by promoting the Southern Common
Market (MERCOSUR), but it has been unwilling to delegate extensive decision-making
powers to regional organizations and to ‘become the regional paymaster providing col-
lective public goods such as credit, aid or security’ (Merke, 2015: 184). South Africa’s
approach to Africa has similarly been characterized as full of ‘ambiguities and contradic-
tions’ (Alden and Le Pere, 2009: 145), and India has pursued an ambivalent and reactive
policy in South Asia, merely responding to initiatives developed by others despite its
clear power preponderance (Ganguly, 2003). While Germany emerged as the regional
power in Europe in the context of the Eurozone crisis (Bulmer and Paterson, 2013),
several observers have noted that ‘[l]eadership from Berlin has been hesitant’ and
plagued by a ‘capacity–expectations gap’ (Bulmer, 2014: 1245). Even China, which has
been rather assertive in its own region, has been described as a ‘conflicted’ state
(Shambaugh, 2011) lacking a clear grand strategy (Schweller, 2014: 69).
A notion that is frequently used in the literature to characterize this attitude of rising
powers is reluctance. The Munich Security Report 2015 (Bunde and Oroz, 2015), a brief
publication associated with the Munich Security Conference, is entitled Collapsing
Orders, Reluctant Guardians?: it argues that the collapse of international order has itself
been ‘both a driver and an effect of the increasing reluctance of its traditional guardians’
(Bunde and Oroz, 2015: 22), like the US, as well as of potential new guardians, the rising
powers. India and Germany have both been dubbed ‘reluctant hegemons’ with regard to
their regions (Mitra, 2003; Paterson, 2011) and South Africa has been termed a ‘reluctant
leader’ in Africa (Esterhuyse, 2010).
We therefore have a term to describe the peculiar type of foreign policy that rising
powers (and often established powers as well) are pursuing — reluctance. However, we
lack a systematic understanding of what reluctance means. The existing analytical tool-
box of International Relations (IR) does not offer suitable concepts to make sense of the
widespread phenomenon of powerful or rising states that pursue inconsistent, confusing
courses of action and do not bring to bear their power resources to coherently manage
international crises that potentially affect them. As will be discussed later in greater
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