CIAO DATE: 04/04

Testing Alternative Responses To Power Preponderance: Buffering, Binding, Bonding And Beleaguering in the Real World

Abstract

In an earlier piece entitled, "Revisiting Responses to Power Preponderance: Beyond Balancing and Bandwagoning", the author developed four alternative responses to power preponderance that fell outside the traditional international relations framework of balancing and bandwagoning. The four responses are namely binding, buffering, bonding and beleaguering. The previous work argued that states might broadly adopt these four responses to preponderant power depending on their relative power next to the leading state and the level of integration with the world system.

In this follow-on work, the author tries to test the above conceptual argument against empirical evidence. To do so, this paper looks at five case studies, China, Taiwan, Singapore, North Korea and Australia during the past decade-and-a-half of American unipolarity. This choice of the four East Asian cases aims to vary power and integration while holding potential intervening variables such as culture, geography, and history constant. Australia is a control case as it differs from the four East Asian cases in geography, history, and culture.

This paper finds that non-leading states respond to power preponderance along the intervals of power and integration as predicted by the argument. However, this study also finds that state responses to power preponderance do not fit perfectly within the categories laid out by the argument. States often display some mixture of strategic responses even if they are inclined towards one approach. Nonetheless, such variation in response appears to be unsystematic and fluctuates according to the specific historical contingencies of each case. Although the paper argues that relative power and integration play an important role in shaping responses to power preponderance, it leaves open the possibility that prior state choices, particularly on normative issues, can affect power and integration. The paper concludes by suggesting that the collective and cumulative effects of alternative responses to power preponderance may affect the persistence of unipolarity. As such, the paper also calls for further study into the reactions of lesser powers to preponderant power.

Full text (PDF, 38 pages, 603.3 KB)