The Small Powers in World Politics: Outline of a Theory of African-Asian Critical Realism

Abstract

This chapter aims to conceptualize a framework of for better understanding the challenges, actions and rationales of the African and Asian small powers in the post-1989 global order. It will be divided into three parts. First, it will review the literature on small power/state studies. Second, following a critique of the major approaches in small power studies, I will argue for the need for a theory of critical realism to better capture the relationships between domestic politics and foreign relations of the small power in Africa and Asia. Third, using Liberia and the Philippines as case studies, against the comparative trajectories in which the USA has attained global hegemony after 1991 and China has gradually become a great power after 2000, in the light of the recent US containment policy shift towards China , which has stirred up versatile dynamics of East Asian small power politics, in favor of a global multipolarity, I will highlight the foundation of this critical realism theory as a practice of statecraft for building the strong small powers in terms of two main aspects of economic nationalism : resource-focused and sovereignty-asserting.