Addresses concerns that rising powers may generate international conflict, focusing on Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS)

How established powers can facilitate the peaceful rise of new great powers is a perennial question of international relations and has gained increased salience with the emergence of China as an economic and military rival of the United States. Highlighting the social dynamics of power transitions, The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations offers a powerful new framework through which to understand important historical cases of power transition and more recently the rise of China and how the United States can facilitate its peaceful rise.

Argues that rising powers challenge international order when their status ambitions seem to be unjustly and permanently blocked.

Tension between China and the United States has escalated recently. Are these countries headed for an armed conflict? The answer to this question depends importantly on their respective foreign policy intentions. Does one of them (or both) intend to challenge and overhaul the existing international order or if you will, the rules of the game in conducting international relations? This book seeks to discern these countries' revisionist impulses and discusses theorigins, evolution, and implications of past and present countries motivated by these impulses for world peace and stability.

Explaining why some states seek the status quo and others seek revision in international relations, Davidson argues that governments pursuing revisionist policies are responding to powerful domestic groups, such as nationalists and those in the military, that believe they can defeat their rivals. He draws on examples of France, Italy and Great Britain to enhance understanding of a fundamental source of instability in international affairs.

As the world enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, far-reaching changes are likely to occur. China, Russia, India, and Brazil, and perhaps others, are likely to emerge as contenders for global leadership roles. War as a system-changing mechanism is unimaginable, given that it would escalate into nuclear conflict and the destruction of the planet. It is therefore essential that policymakers in established as well as rising states devise strategies to allow transitions without resorting to war, but dominant theories of International Relations contend that major changes in the system are generally possible only through violent conflict. This volume asks whether peaceful accommodation of rising powers is possible in the changed international context, especially against the backdrop of intensified globalization. With the aid of historic cases, it argues that peaceful change is possible through effective long-term strategies on the part of both status quo and rising powers.

Why do great powers accommodate the rise of some challengers but contain and confront others, even at the risk of war? When Right Makes Might proposes that the ways in which a rising power legitimizes its expansionist aims significantly shapes great power responses. Stacie E. Goddard theorizes that when faced with a new challenger, great powers will attempt to divine the challenger’s intentions: does it pose a revolutionary threat to the system or can it be incorporated into the existing international order? Goddard departs from conventional theories of international relations by arguing that great powers come to understand a contender’s intentions not only through objective capabilities or costly signals but by observing how a rising power justifies its behavior to its audience. To understand the dynamics of rising powers, then, we must take seriously the role of legitimacy in international relations. A rising power’s ability to expand depends as much on its claims to right as it does on its growing might. As a result, When Right Makes Might poses significant questions for academics and policymakers alike. Underpinning her argument on the oft-ignored significance of public self-presentation, Goddard suggests that academics (and others) should recognize talk’s critical role in the formation of grand strategy. Unlike rationalist and realist theories that suggest rhetoric is mere window-dressing for power, When Right Makes Might argues that rhetoric fundamentally shapes the contours of grand strategy. Legitimacy is not marginal to international relations; it is essential to the practice of power politics, and rhetoric is central to that practice.