Garzon Jorge F
Departamento de Ciencia Política y Estudios Internacionales, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, C1428BCW Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Int Polit (Hague). 2022 Mar 29:1-23. doi: 10.1057/s41311-022-00388-7.
More than a decade has passed since an intense research interest in Regional Powers arose in IR. However, this original impetus has of late notoriously tailed off. This was in part the result of an unfavourable international environment but also, I argue, of an exhaustion of the programme's conceptual and analytical framework as such. This can be specially seen in three fronts. First, in the inability of the initial theoretical framing to account for new empirical observations, and an insufficient engagement of Area Studies research for revising these initial propositions; second, in a conceptualisation of global-level influences that has been too restrictive and theoretically impairing; and third, in the difficulties encountered by efforts to explain the formation of regional orders by leveraging regional powers as main explanatory variables. A second argument is that some of the fresh approaches needed to overcome these problems might be found in Comparative Regionalism.
自国际关系领域对地区大国产生浓厚研究兴趣以来，已经过去了十多年。然而，这种最初的推动力近来明显减弱。这部分是不利国际环境的结果，但我认为，也是该项目概念和分析框架本身耗尽的结果。这在三个方面尤为明显。第一，最初的理论框架无法解释新的实证观察结果，且地区研究未能充分参与修订这些初始命题；第二，对全球层面影响的概念化过于局限且在理论上存在缺陷；第三，在将地区大国作为主要解释变量来解释地区秩序形成的努力中遇到困难。第二个观点是，一些克服这些问题所需的新方法可能可以在比较区域主义中找到。
