No abstract

This paper explores the middle power identities of Australia and South Korea during the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard (2007Gillard ( -2013 and Lee Myung-bak (2008Myung-bak ( -2013 administrations. Considering the problems in the existing position, behaviour, impact and identity-based definitions of middle powers, examining how self-identified middle powers have constructed such an identity would offer useful insights into the middle power concept. Relying on a framework that captures an identity's content and contestation, this paper argues that while Australia and South Korea have assumed a middle power identity, their visualisations of this identity are slightly different. Australia has understood its middle power identity in both economic and security terms, whereas South Korea appears to have connected such an identity more with the economic dimension. These differences affect how they envision their respective middle power roles in international affairs.

Relying on a networked perspective, this article argues that South Korea is an actor of relative importance in ASEAN's regional network, but it ultimately does not occupy a place that is more crucial than the association's other dialogue partners. In the context of ASEAN seeking to maintain its network power in an evolving Indo‐Pacific, South Korea has played a supportive role in ASEAN's pursuit of social access, brokerage links and minimizing its exit potential from the Indo‐Pacific network. South Korea's role, however, has been a comparably limited one rooted in specific functional areas and focused on certain ASEAN member states. While these efforts would certainly reinforce ASEAN's network power to some extent, the relatively thin network links between ASEAN and South Korea in other sectors suggest that there is little potential to expand cooperation beyond a functional and socioeconomic trajectory.

Differentiation is a foundational premise in the study of middle powers, as evident in the way that the relevant literature distinguishes these states from the great powers and smaller states. Despite the underlying assumption of differentiation, the middle power literature has rarely engaged theoretically with the concept. This paper seeks to make more explicit this basis of differentiation in the study of middle powers, by advancing a new framework for middle power behavior that draws on differentiation theory. The framework makes the case that it is the differentiated structure in international politics – a departure from the dominant neorealist understanding of structure – that enables the behavior of middle powers. The effects of this differentiated structure are activated by the relative, relational, and social power politics that middle powers engage in, in a particular time and place. Through this process, middle powers are able to leverage their ‘middlepowerness’ in international politics by weakening stratification particularly where the great powers are concerned, and strengthening functional differentiation through taking on key and distinctive roles. By putting differentiation at the core of a framework for middle power behavior, the paper strives to make a constructive contribution to the theorizing of middle powers.