ABSTRACT
In the empirical literature on the topic, Brazil, India and South Africa are frequently considered the three typical, easy-to-spot regional powers. Beyond this triumvirate, however, contestation begins. Is Iran a regional power? What about Nigeria, Russia, Australia? One of the problems of current regional power research is that it is extremely difficult to find a delineation of the actual universe of cases. Case studies are picked at random, by reference to ‘conventional wisdom’ or other criteria that suggest specific states are, essentially, regional powers. This book takes a different approach. The ‘regional power’ concept is defined as the umbrella term or, in other words, the term that describes a broad universe of cases which we can differentiate among with the help of the three-pronged typology developed in Chapter 2.
