Unpacking the dynamics of weak states’ agency

Abstract

This introductory article provides rationales and contextual background for the special issue which examines how weak states in Asia actualise and exercise their agency in the twenty-first century regional or global environments. The article opens with a consideration of why attention is drawn to the agency of the weak. Weak states are often treated as ‘objects’ of international politics rather than ‘subjects’, and their foreign policy actions are commonly taken to be ‘reflexive’ of external constraints, such as fluctuations in the balance of power in the international system. We disagree with this view. We argue that weak actors can demonstrate varieties of agency regardless of their position in the international system in terms of material capabilities. To clarify this point, the article reflects on the changed and changing global and regional environments and order. Rather than seeing them through the lens of great power politics and its signature concept of ‘polarity’, the article offers an alternative notion, namely a ‘multiplex’ world, and identifies the key nature of order therein: multiplicity and fluidity. Both material and normative power have already and continue to become fragmented, decentralised, and dispersed within and across states. While emphasising that such a multifaceted and fluid world opens up a wide avenue of agency for weak actors, this article also notes that the weak has varieties of agency as potentials.

Keywords:

• Weak states
• varieties of agency
• international order
• multiplex

Acknowledgments

We thank anonymous reviewers from The Pacific Review and the journal’s editors for their critical reviews of and thoughtful engagements with our special issue papers. We also would like to express our appreciation to the staff of the Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University as well as Kasina Sundhagul and Alim Bubu Swarga for providing support for the workshop in Bangkok which gave the contributors to this special issue the opportunity to present their ideas. We would like to acknowledge the Korea Foundation for funding this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57452158.

2 See https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/has-world-entered-asian-century-what-does-it-mean/.

3 Going a step further, Michael Beckley (2020, p. 80, 85) writes that even if the US remains the world’s sole superpower in material capabilities—military, economic, and technological—Washington is likely to become ‘less liberal’, acting like a ‘rogue superpower’, an economic and military colossus lacking moral commitments.

4 See World Bank’s latest data and projection here: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/06/08/covid-19-to-plunge-global-economy-into-worst-recession-since-world-war-ii.

5 This is not to say that non-state actors do not matter. Although non-state actors influence change in international order, we narrow the scope of analysis to states because we assume that the most direct and immediate impact on the shaping of regional and global order comes from state actors, at least in the near and medium term.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yong-Soo Eun

Yong-Soo Eun is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea and the Editor-in-Chief of the Routledge series, IR Theory and Practice in Asia. Yong-Soo is broadly interested in IR theory, Global IR, postcolonialism, and an ontology of the virtual. He is the editor of Going beyond Parochialism and Fragmentation in International Studies (Routledge, 2020) and the author of Pluralism and Engagement in the Discipline of International Relations (Palgrave, 2016). His work has also been published in Global Studies Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, Perspectives on Politics, and Review of International Studies among other venues.

Amitav Acharya

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. He is the first non-Western scholar to be elected (for 2014-15) as the President of the International Studies Association (ISA). His articles have appeared in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, and World Politics. His recent books include: The End of American World Order (2018, Polity), Constructing Global Order (2018, Cambridge University Press). He has received two Distinguished Scholar Awards from the ISA. In 2020, he received American University’s highest honor: Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award.

Chanintira na Thalang

Chanintira na Thalang is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University. Her current research interests include ASEAN, Global IR, ethnic conflicts and ethnonationalism with a special focus on Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. She is the author of a number of books written in Thai. Her work has also been published in English in a variety of academic journals such as Nations and Nationalism, Asian Survey, Electoral Studies, the Journal of Current Southeast Asia, the Australian Journal of International Affairs and Asian Ethnicity. More recently, she co-edited a volume titled, International Relations as a Discipline in Thailand: theory and sub-fields published with Routledge in 2019. Chanintira currently serves as the Associate Editor of Thammasat Review and on the editorial board of Routledge’s ‘IR Theory and Practice in Asia’ book series. She holds a PhD from the University of Bristol.