Suchergebnisse

Some states are widely recognized by policy makers and scholars as middle powers. The characteristics that were highlighted for these countries have become the basic guidelines for understanding middle powermanship and developing the corresponding theory. While those analyses offer rich in-depth insights into the foreign policy of specific countries, they have so far lacked a further step of generalization. When establishing such power-based rankings, we assume the possibility to determine states' capacities so as to identify their position in said ranking. As appealing as this theoretical model may be, the reality of international politics increasingly challenge it. Thus, we argue that this theoretical inadequacy is due to the fact that middle power theory as it has been developed so far should be understood as an inductive, not a deductive, approach . Consequently, the contemporary reality calls for yet another stage of development in this theory. The choice of Pakistan as our case study arises from the observation that while Pakistan can hardly fit into the current classification(s) of middle powermanship due to its poor economic and development performances, it is a nuclear state and is –at least– in the top twenty armies of the world. Moreover, we find several cases in which Pakistan has used the diplomatic tools characterizing middle powers, such as mediation or niche diplomacy. Our paper aims at answering two questions: (1) can middle power theory bring some light on Pakistan's positioning in world politics? (2) Alternatively, what does the case of Pakistan tell us about the (ir)relevance of middle power theory? We build upon role theory to develop the case of middle powermanship as a status-role bundle, by analyzing three specific cases of Pakistan's foreign policy: Pakistani nuclear posturing, its Afghan policy and its posturing vis-à-vis the Saudi-Iranian regional competition.

In May 2014 and for the second time in her political history, regional, federal and European elections were organized simultaneously in Belgium. In the direct follow-up of the sixth state reform that increased the powers and the autonomy of the Belgian Regions and Communities, these elections were crucial for the future of the country and for the multi-level coalition formation at the regional and federal levels. The political campaign was dominated by socio-economic issues and demands for further autonomy, particularly in the Flemish region. Regional electoral results confirmed the success of the regionalist parties in Flanders, but also in Brussels and in the German-speaking community. These successes allowed regionalist parties to enter all regional and federal governments – often as the dominant party – with the exception of the Walloon and the French-speaking Community cabinets.