Roles of Middle Power in East Asia: The Perspective of Network Theories of World Politics

Abstract

The existing studies of middle power are inadequate in providing a guideline for the new roles of South Korea. They mostly look to individual countries’ attributes or capabilities to explain the generalized responsibilities of middle powers in world politics. Thus, they fail to explain the proper roles for middle power under certain structural conditions that might be more essential determinants for middle powers’ actions than for great powers’ actions. In contrast, some theorists in International Relations (IR) adopt an anti-attribute imperative that rejects all attempts to explain actors’ actions solely in terms of actors’ attributes (Hafner-Burton and Montgomery, J Conflict Resolut 50:3–27, 2006; Goddard, Int Theory 1:249–281, 2009; Nexon and Wright, Am Polit Sci Rev 101:253–271, 2007; Nexon, The struggle for power in early Modern Europe: religious conflict, dynamic empires, and international change, Princeton University Press, 2009). These IR theorists maintain that it is an actor’s “position,” not its attributes, that creates opportunities for a country and that how an actor is connected to others influences its diplomatic direction. In this context, a new approach to middle power must consider the structural attributes of a system rather than those of an actor. This paper adopts three notions from network theories: “structural holes” and “positional power” from social network theory, and “translation strategies” from actor-network theory (ANT). Relying on these notions, this paper attempts to develop a theoretical framework to understand the diplomatic strategies of South Korea as a middle power. (The theoretical framework of this paper is in a similar context to other IR studies that adopt network theories (Hafner-Burton et al., Int Org 63:559–592, 2009; Kahler, Networked politics: agency, power, and governance, Cornell University Press, 2009; Maoz, Networks of nations: the evolution, structure and impact of international networks, 1816–2001, Cambridge University Press, 2010). However, my framework of “the Network Theory of World Politics” (NTWP) is more comprehensive than other attempts that have mainly relied on social network theory. Along with social network theory, my framework also pays attention to the other camps of network theories, e.g., network organization theory and actor-network theory. For the outline of NTWP, see Kim (Korean J Int Stud 48:35–61, 2008).) This paper applies the framework to empirical cases of international politics in Northeast Asia. The cases include the configuration of network structure in the region, the nature of structural holes within the network, and strategic options for South Korea under the structural conditions. In handling these cases, this paper uses network theories to deduce a series of conditions under which South Korea’s middlepowermanship is more or less likely and the possibilities of positional power held by South Korea. In this sense, the major concern of this paper is theory development rather than empirical analysis.