Rising powers and state transformation: The case of China
| Author | Lee Jones,Shahar Hameiri |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066115578952 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
European Journal of
International Relations
2016, Vol. 22(1) 72 –98
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066115578952
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E
JR
I
Rising powers and state
transformation: The case
of China
Shahar Hameiri
Murdoch University, Australia
Lee Jones
Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Abstract
This article draws attention to the transformation of statehood under globalisation as
a crucial dynamic shaping the emergence and conduct of ‘rising powers’. That states
are becoming increasingly fragmented, decentralised and internationalised is noted by
some international political economy and global governance scholars, but is neglected
in International Relations treatments of rising powers. This article critiques this neglect,
demonstrating the importance of state transformation in understanding emerging
powers’ foreign and security policies, and their attempts to manage their increasingly
transnational interests by promoting state transformation elsewhere, particularly in their
near-abroad. It demonstrates the argument using the case of China, typically understood
as a classical ‘Westphalian’ state. In reality, the Chinese state’s substantial disaggregation
profoundly shapes its external conduct in overseas development assistance and conflict
zones like the South China Sea, and in its promotion of extraterritorial governance
arrangements in spaces like the Greater Mekong Subregion.
Keywords
China, development assistance, Greater Mekong Subregion, International Relations
theory, rising powers, South China Sea, state transformation
Corresponding author:
Lee Jones, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road,
London, E1 4NS, UK.
Email: l.c.jones@qmul.ac.uk
578952EJT0010.1177/1354066115578952European Journal of International RelationsHameiri and Jones
research-article2015
Article
Hameiri and Jones 73
Introduction
Recently, ‘rising powers’ have gripped scholars and political leaders alike. The growing
economic, military and diplomatic weight of states like China, India, Brazil and Russia
is seen to herald a shift from a unipolar to a more multipolar world order, and possibly
even serious great-power conflict. Despite the now-voluminous commentary on this phe-
nomenon, we argue that International Relations (IR) has overlooked one crucial dimen-
sion. Contemporary states — even in non-Western regions — are increasingly fragmented,
decentralised and internationalised, with significant consequences for rising powers’ for-
eign and security policies. First, fragmented and decentralised state apparatuses and
quasi-market actors are increasingly pursuing their own independent interests and agen-
das overseas, generating conflict-ridden, incoherent policy output, often mistakenly
interpreted as ‘grand strategy’. Second, as these institutions and actors acquire transna-
tional interests, they are also vying to establish transboundary governance arrangements
to manage them, particularly in neighbouring territories. Thus, state transformation
within rising powers indirectly generates attempts to promote it elsewhere.
Existing IR approaches overlook these dynamics because their focus is overwhelmingly
systemic. They ask whether changing interstate power relations will violently disrupt the
prevailing order, or whether there are sufficient constraints — military deterrence, eco-
nomic interdependence, institutions or norms, depending on one’s theoretical orientation
— to avoid serious conflict. Consequently, they do not consider that IR’s ‘units’ may have
fundamentally changed, reshaping their interrelations. This neglects extensive literature on
the transformation of statehood. For instance, political scientists have identified a general
shift towards ‘regulatory statehood’, whereby central executives withdraw from ‘command
and control’ activities to merely set broad targets for diverse national, subnational and pri-
vate bodies (Majone, 1994). As Rosenau (2003) observed, this ‘fragmentation’ is often
followed by novel forms of integration. Many agencies, regulatory bodies and subnational
units have developed their own international policies and relationships, breaking the
monopoly of foreign and defence ministries (Jayasuriya, 2001). Thus, state decentralisa-
tion has fostered ‘paradiplomacy’ by subnational agencies, turning them into quasi-auton-
omous foreign policy actors (Aldecoa and Keating, 1999). International political economy
(IPE) and global governance scholars have explored how such changes have generated
transgovernmental networks and networked, multilevel governance arrangements, particu-
larly at the regional level (Cerny, 2010; Slaughter, 2004). However, IR scholars either dis-
miss these insights as irrelevant in the study of rising powers, which are assumed to be
‘Westphalian’ states immune from such transformations, or even posit a reverse shift:
it appears that a century of wars and diplomacy has brought the international system right back
to where it was at its inception … the way [is] being paved back to Westphalia … by rising
powers such as China, India and Brazil, who are staunch guardians of the principle of national
sovereignty. (Flemes, 2013: 1016–1017)
Even in IPE, scholars detect ‘an unacknowledged transition from the globalisation debate
of the 1990s … to a more state-centric framework in which the rising powers and the
West are locked in a zero-sum struggle for influence over global governance institutions’
(Gray and Murphy, 2013: 185). This cyclical tendency is reflected in publication titles
that ask ‘Will Asia’s past be its future?’ (Acharya, 2006), or whether the international
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