The State between Interdependence and Power in the Contemporary World

Elena Aoun holds a PhD from Science Po Paris and is currently assistant professor in International Relations at the Université catholique de Louvain. Her research interests revolve around EU foreign policy, the conflicts and crises in the Middle East and international involvement in the region.

Pierre Vercauteren is professor in International Relations at the Université catholique de Louvain and visiting professor at the Université Paris Est, and at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brasil. He is also secretary general of the international research network REGIMEN.

For decades, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has been defined by the centrality of the state as the international actor par excellence and most debates on this key actor have developed from the perspective of 'power' as a defining notion. Later, IR analysts awoke to a new context that appeared to be the consequence of multiple evolutions and trends which began decades earlier but remained mostly unnoticed or underestimated. None of these trends that underpin today's global context leaves the state and traditional notions of power unaffected. There is therefore a need to reassess the place of the state as it faces all the challenges of this more complex international reality. One part of a pluriannual research project undertaken in the framework of the Research Network on International Governance, Globalization and the Transformations of the State (REGIMEN), this book seeks to address these core issues from various perspectives, allowing for broad and detailed analyses alike.

The first part of the volume offers new theoretical insights on power in the contemporary international system. The second part offers a collection of chapters equally interested in developed middle powers and emerging ones, with a focus on state practices in a period characterized by multiple crises and shifting power distribution. Finally, the last section tackles the hollowing out of state power from very different perspectives, in quite different configurations of interdependence, and in various countries or regions.

This book analyzes the evolutions confronting the state in the contemporary international system from the double perspective of power and interdependence in a complex environment characterized by the rise of new, non-state actors, the globalization, and the impact their interactions have on both the state and earlier configurations of power.

Elena Aoun and Pierre Vercauteren : Reassessing the State: Interdependence and Power in the World Today - Tanguy Struye de Swielande and Dorothée Vandamme: Relations and Processes: Two Neglected Characteristics of Power - Pierre Vercauteren : Emerging Powers: Between Interdependence and Power? - Bruno Hellendorff: A Constructivist Form of Hedging in Southeast Asia - Elena Atanassova-Cornelis : Competition and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific: Why Major Powers Hedge and what Does this Mean for Regional Order - Amine Ait-Chaalal : Brazil under President Lula: A New Key Player in the Contemporary World - Dawisson Belém Lopes : When Crisis Breeds Regional Governance: How the Developmental State Bankruptcy Led Brazil to Innovate in Foreign Policy and Wield "Soft Power" all over Latin America - Alain Guggenbühl and Frank Lambermont : The State Muddled in Co-Dependencies and Incremental Policy-Making: The Case of the Economic and Financial Crisis in the European Union - Sidney Leclercq and Geoffroy Matagne : Belgian Development Cooperation and the Promotion of Good Governance: Testing the Power of Incentives in Central Africa - Corinne Mellul : Globalization and Democracy: Friends or Foes? - Elena Aoun : Failing States, International Blindness and the Rise of Radical Islam: Unintended Interdependence and Unexpected Powerlessness in the Middle East