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SoSe 19: Rising Powers and International Institutions: Stability, Subversion, or Gradual Change?

Benjamin Faude

Comments

Power is shifting in the contemporary international system. On the one hand, the material power resources of the established Western powers - the United States and the European Union - are eroding. On the other hand, those of Non-Western states - such as China, India, and Brazil - are expanding. In contrast to previous instances, the contemporary shift in the global distribution of power takes place in a densely institutionalized international system. Thus, in contrast to their predecessors, today’s rising powers face powerful international institutions. Many of them were established before global power started to shift from West to East and therefore reflect an outdated distribution of power. Against this backdrop, this Hauptseminar asks how the global power shift affects cooperation among states within international institutions and the liberal international order that those institutions give rise to. The existing IR-literature provides different answers: One camp expects rising powers to adapt to existing institutional structures (stability). A second group of authors argues that those international institutions that are not adapted to the changing distribution of global powers will be subverted by those states that gain in global power (subversion). A third camp points to the possibility to adapt international institutions in ways that make them compatible with the new distribution of global power (gradual change). The seminar will proceed in three steps: First, we will make ourselves familiar with pertinent theoretical perspective. Second, we will make use of those theoretical perspectives to analyze empirically how international institutions in a variety of issue-areas are affected by the rise of new powers. Third, we will examine the implications for the liberal international order. close