ABSTRACT
Introduction As we have seen throughout the course of this book, the dynamics driving global economics and politics are changing at a dramatic pace. There is every reason to expect the trend to continue in the long term, as the global power pendulum is in the process of shifting between the post-World War II “great” powers and the rising powers of the twenty-first century. One of the things that is happening with greater frequency is that countries that were not previously participants in the global political arena or were peripheral players are now becoming central to its functioning. Two good examples of this are Brazil and Turkey, which have leapt onto the global stage over the past decade. While on one hand this is welcome, as the world clearly needs a new political paradigm in which to operate, on the other hand it comes at a price, with unforeseen consequences and reactions from a variety of places. As you will see here, Brazil’s and Turkey’s activist approaches to foreign policy have had some successes, but also some notable failures.
