The varieties of financial statecraft and middle powers

Assessing South Korea’s strategic involvement in regional financial cooperation

Bibliographic Data

ID12207351
AuthorsYaechan Lee (0000-0003-0379-5745, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University), William W Grimes (0000-0001-9748-6147, Boston University, corresponding author), William N Kring (0000-0002-6574-4524, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
Year2023
Volume37
Issue5
Pages913-939
Publication date2023-12-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Pacific Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0951-2748 • E-ISSN: 1470-1332
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09512748.2023.2281687
OpenAlexW4389918175
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited59

In recent years, the financial statecraft literature has expanded from a focus on great powers to encompass the behavior of emerging powers. While offering an important corrective, the literature does not yet adequately address the full variety of the emerging powers’ strategies of financial statecraft. In particular, we argue that regional middle powers behave differently from regional great powers even when they have similar capacities at the global level. For instance, both India and South Korea are categorized as emerging powers in the financial statecraft literature and deploy regional strategies to reduce their financial vulnerability. Yet their financial statecraft strategies have clearly differed in practice. India has sought to challenge the global status quo and influence its neighbors, while South Korea has pursued more modest and defensive goals. Drawing on the middle power literature, we posit that middle powers’ relative position within their home regions explains such differences among the financial statecraft of emerging powers. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we examine South Korea’s financial statecraft in the Asia-Pacific region. We find that its position as a regional middle power effectively explains its patterns of bilateral and regional cooperation in the monetary sphere

Business · Financial system · Strategic financial management · Strategic planning · Asian Industrial and Economic Development · International Development and Aid · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Finance · Marketing

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