The Rise of Emerging Powers: A Challenge to Norms of Differential Treatment for Developing Countries?

• Applicant: Dr. Clara Weinhardt
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393138162

The growing economic importance of emerging powers alters the balance of power in international politics. Whether or not the power shift towards emerging countries presents a fundamental challenge to the Western norms that shape global order has received much scholarly attention (Ikenberry 2011; Kupchan 2012; Steinfeld 2010). Yet, our interest is in what the rise of Brazil, China and India (BICs) means for norms that rely on a binary North-South distinction. Addressing this question, we seek to understand the conditions and mechanisms through which the rise of Brazil, China and India either strengthens or weakens global norms that provide differential treatment to developing countries as a group. Conventional wisdom suggests that greater economic fragmentation amongst the Global South delegitimizes a one-size-fits-all approach to norms of differential treatment, which provide the entire group of developing countries with privileged access, financial compensation or exemptions from obligations. But it remains an open empirical question whether emerging powers continue to side with developing country bargaining coalitions in defense of this binary approach, join forces with developed countries or create an entirely new grouping of their own. Our research seeks to examine not only which of these possibilities prevails, but also the conditions and mechanisms through which the bargaining power of emerging countries shapes the alleged demise of norms of differential treatment for developing countries as a group. In doing so, it speaks directly to the debates about the (dis)continued relevance of historically grown North-South relations as a central structuring principle of global politics in the 21st century. Theoretically, we bring together key insights from two literatures that rarely speak to each other: constructivist research on how norms change and institutionalist research on the dynamics and consequences of international regime complexes. Building on these two strands, we assume that whether the bargaining behavior of Brazil, China and India strengthens or weakens norms of differential treatment for developing countries depends on factors that exist at the levels of shared normative beliefs on the one hand and of institutional opportunity structures on the other. To measure the strength of differential treatment norms for developing countries, we assess their pervasiveness, scope and legal quality. We test our model through an in-depth examination of the normative dynamics in the trade and climate regimes, two important policy realms in which North-South politics have played a key role in the past. We look at the norm of Special and Differential Treatment in the world trading system, and the norm of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in the climate regime. To strengthen the explanatory power of our analysis we combine co-variational analysis with process-tracing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands, Switzerland
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Klaus Dingwerth