New Powers: How to Become One and How to Manage Them (Columbia/Hurst) - Hardcover

Narlikar, Amrita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231702027 ISBN 13: 9780231702027

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Being new is never easy, especially in the anarchic world of international politics. New powers such as Brazil, China, and India have navigated difficult terrain as they negotiate their way to the top, signaling a sufficient level of conformity to diffuse tensions and avoid preemptive reprisals. Yet habitually conciliatory diplomacy can cast an emerging state as a lightweight or a pushover. Effective bargaining is therefore the key to balancing these extremes.

Established powers also need straightforward solutions to pressing dilemmas. If the aims of a new power are limited, then engagement is a worthwhile enterprise. If its aims are radically revisionist or revolutionary, then established powers may have to contain it. Assessing the intentions of new powers and responding appropriately is crucial for the maintenance of international peace. In this enlightening study, Amrita Narlikar pinpoints successful negotiating strategies for rising powers. Focusing on three of the most important candidates now vying for international recognition—Brazil, China, and India—she underscores the commonalities in their diplomatic efforts and isolates the striking differences. Her study aids both emerging players and established countries struggling to reconcile evolving balances of power.

About this title

About the Author:

Amrita Narlikar is University Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, and an official fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Her books include International Trade and Developing Countries: Bargaining Coalitions in the GATT and WTO and The World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction. She has also edited several volumes, including Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causes and Solutions.

Review:

Tension and even warfare are likely when a new power emerges and an old power is challenged. The achievement of Amrita Narlikar is to bring analytical rigor to the recent emergence of India, China, and Brazil, and her insights are equally applicable to the historical past, to the emergence of Britain or Germany or the United States, and to the present. Narlikar steers a deft course between the large-scale issues of the shifting balance of power and the details of negotiating style, which are so important in mediating the interests of established and new powers. She combines perceptive case studies with clear hypotheses to produce a major study of a question that was vital for our past and will be for our future.

(Martin Daunton, University of Cambridge)

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0231702027
• ISBN 13: 9780231702027
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208