Rising Asian Powers and Changing Global Governance

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International Relations (IR) scholarship is directly in the path of two simultaneous tidal waves. The first is the rise of China and India in the traditional IR terms of military and economic power. The second is the expanding nature of what IR scholarship needs to address, as global integration transforms the nature of the issues to be addressed and numerous trends expand the number and types of relevant actors. Neither theory nor practice is yet coping well with the profound implications of these fundamental changes. Investigating what kind of a world order might emerge from these two simultaneous tsunamis will require an enormous research agenda that explores the roles of ideas, structural factors, and path dependencies across regions and issue areas. This article aims to illuminate a subset focused around the connection between theory and practice as related to two emerging powers. It briefly maps developments in Western IR theory and explores how those connect—or fail to connect—with intellectual and policy currents in the rising Asian giants. It draws on a number of interviews and workshops held in Asia in the past two years that explore how Asian scholars and policymakers are dealing with, and perhaps beginning to shape, the rapidly changing conceptual landscape.