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AbstractThis article argues that the BRICS' New Development Bank (NDB) deserves more attention not because it is equivalent to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) but because of its differences. Unlike the AIIB the NDB does not possess impressive material capacity or overt connections to a wider state‐led geo‐political strategy. What distinguishes the NDB is its creative design with four significant elements of novelty. Unlike other multilateral financial institutions, including the AIIB, the NDB is committed to a principle of equality across its core membership. Product innovation is advanced by its promotion of sustainable development with an exclusive focus on niche clean renewable energy projects. The expressed aim of the NDB with regard to resources is to use green bonds denominated in BRICS' national currencies. And the focus on delivery centers on the need for speed. Although each of these elements face severe tests, the ability of the NDB to navigate around serious internal tensions through improvisation and trade‐offs points to an original emerging pattern of collective policy making and global governance.

Middle power conceptualization has been reinvented over the years as the structural weight of this cluster of countries changes. Moreover, the means by which middle powers project normative values and operational diplomatic approaches has morphed with the evolution of the global order. A constant, however, has been the unwillingness of middle powers to embrace some form of institutionalization. The focus has been multilateralism and/or specific functional issue areas or niches. This article argues that the combination of a world of diffuse power and a new type of informalism opens the possibility of collective action. Although MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia) is in an early stage of development, this formation provides a significant test of the meaning and modalities of middle power diplomacy in the twenty-first century.

Revisiting Kim Richard Nossal's 1997 textbook on Canadian foreign policy—with its reputation as a valuable source in the analysis of the evolution of Canadian international relations enhanced by the privileging of the political component—makes for compelling reading in 2014. This review article argues that even if many of the substantive themes in Nossal's survey with respect to Canada's foreign policy as exhibited by the government of Stephen Harper miss the mark, the core ingredients of the domestic context showcased by Nossal's work are even more relevant nearly 20 years on.

The G20 opens a critical lens into the nature of contested global governance at a time of fundamental re-ordering. Although increasing their status. The BRICS have not made sustained efforts to influence the design of the G20. By way of contrast a number of middle powers have exhibited more assertive diplomatic styles as hosts and policy entrepreneurs. While initially left outside the summit process, some key small states worked extensively through coalitional diplomacy to gain some degree of access to the G20. This paper showcases the degree to which the contestation about the nature of new forms of global governance must be nuanced. The main route of contestation for the big rising powers has come via parallel institutional structures - notably through the formalization of the BRICS. Middle powers and smaller states, with a greater sense of the stakes involved concerning 'hub' institutionalization, have a much greater incentive to actively engage with the G20.

The Group of Twenty (G-20) deserves credit for opening up of the "top table" of global governance to a wider representation of countries on a geographic basis in general and Asia in particular. As both a crisis committee in terms of the reverberations from the 2008 financial crisis and a potential global steering committee for a wider set of economic/developmental issues the summit process includes not only the association of leading association of leading emerging economies referred to as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, the Republic of China, and South Africa), but key middle powers such as the Republic of Korea. Yet, as a growing body of literature attests, it is clearly the contested nature of the G-20 that has come to the fore. This paper examines both the strengths and weaknesses of the G-20 from the perspective of input and output legitimacy. Notwithstanding some initial successes the constraints with respect to "output" d; have become more acute. Moreover, the "input" legitimacy of the G-20 has been eroded by the absence of the United Nations in the design and representational gaps. On the basis of this analysis the paper examines the debates and makes specific policy recommendations by which regionalism, the engagement of small states (through the role of Singapore and the 3-G coalition), and the expansion of the agenda can be utilized as a dynamic of reform for the G-20 without eroding the core strengths in terms of informality and issue-specific focus of the forum.