The Middle Power Paradox: Material Capabilities and the Crisis of Multilateralism

Introduction

Middle powers have reemerged as a key category of analysis in the twenty-first-century international order (Aydin, 2021; Parlar Dal, 2018). These actors are no longer defined solely by their intermediate status in the state hierarchy (Efstathopoulos, 2023); they are increasingly regarded as the “swing states” of global governance (Fontaine & Kliman, 2013; Fontaine & McKinley, 2025; Kliman, 2012). This is true for all middle powers, from traditional stabilizers like Canada and Australia to emerging heavyweights like Turkey and Indonesia. In the new era, emerging and traditional middle powers are multi-aligned global swing states, maintaining ties with the United States, Russia, and China, and seeking meaningful changes in international rules and institutions, rather than strategic alignment with a single great power.

However, the theoretical literature remains deeply fractured regarding their essential nature (Robertson, 2017; Swielande, 2018). One school of thought, rooted in liberal functionalism, defines middle powers behaviorally as “Good International Citizens” (Abbondanza, 2021; Efstathopoulos, 2018; Youde & Slagter, 2013). Lacking the hard power to coerce, these states must rely on multilateralism, coalition-building, and international law to secure their interests. A competing neorealist perspective defines them positionally (Cooper, Higgott, & Nossal, 1993): middle powers are neither great powers nor small powers, but rather mid-range powers in international relations (Chapnick, 1999; Holbraad, 1984; Swielande, 2018). The fundamental theoretical premise of this positional view is that their commitment to multilateralism is only a short-term strategic convenience that disappears as their material capabilities increase (Stephen, 2013; Wang & French, 2013). We refer to this as the “Power Paradox.” Put differently, the paradox indicates that the more powerful a middle power’s material capabilities (particularly GDP and military expenditure), the less it should need to draw on multilateral institutions. While this dynamic has been extensively analyzed in the context of “Reformist” emerging powers like Turkey or Brazil (Aydin, 2021; Efstathopoulos, 2021; Fonseca et al., 2016; Jordaan, 2003; Stephen, 2013), it is rarely rigorously tested against the behavior of “Traditional” Western middle powers, whose multilateral identity is often assumed to be fixed and normative.

This article seeks to empirically interrogate this debate by asking: “Is there a statistically significant negative correlation between a middle power’s material capabilities and its actual commitment to multilateral burden-sharing?” Furthermore, it asks: “Does this correlation differ between the ‘Traditional’ stabilizers of the Global North and the ‘Emerging’ reformists of the Global South?”

It bears emphasis at the outset that the quantitative framework employed here is explicitly exploratory in design. The sample of 15 states, while purposively selected to maximize theoretical variation across geopolitical clusters, is insufficient for confirmatory statistical inference. The contribution of this analysis lies in (a) constructing a replicable and transparent index architecture that operationalizes the core theoretical constructs; (b) generating precise, falsifiable hypotheses about cross-cluster divergence in middle power behavior; and (c) providing a first empirical mapping of the MPI-MES relationship across geopolitically stratified middle powers. Future research employing panel data across the full population of middle powers will be necessary to adjudicate the hypotheses generated here.

To answer these questions, we move beyond the qualitative case studies that dominate the field, employing a quantitative framework analyzing a purposive sample of 15 pivotal middle powers by constructing two composite indices:

• The Material Power Index (MPI): A “hard power” metric aggregating a state’s global share of GDP and military expenditure.

By correlating these two indices, we test the resilience of the liberalist “Good International Citizen” identity against the realist “Power Paradox” assumption. The results of this analysis challenge prevailing Eurocentric assumptions in IR scholarship. While the aggregate data reveals a weak negative correlation across the entire sample, the cluster-specific analysis exposes a striking structural divergence. Contrary to the expectation that Global South powers are the primary source of unilateralism, the data is consistent with—though cannot confirm—the proposition that the “Power Paradox” is most pronounced within the Traditional (Global North) cluster. Conversely, the Emerging (Global South) cluster defies simple categorization, bifurcating into distinct “Unilateralist” (e.g., Russia and Turkey) and “Functionalist” (e.g., India and Indonesia) behaviors.

These findings suggest that the “liberal” character of Western middle powers is not an immutable normative trait, but rather a function of limited material capacity that may erode as power grows. This article argues, as a hypothesis warranting further empirical investigation, that the crisis of multilateralism may be driven not just by revisionist spoilers from the South, but also by the disengagement of traditional guardians in the North who have grown wealthy enough to reduce their investment in the very institutions they helped build.

Literature Review

The relationship between a state’s material power and its behavior in the international system remains one of the central debates in IR scholarship. Specifically, within the subfield of “middle power” theory, there is a persistent tension between defining these actors by what they possess (position/hierarchy) versus how they interact (behavior/diplomacy). The proposed research question directly interrogates this tension.

Positional definitions rely on quantifiable material attributes to rank states. As Holbraad (1971) notes, this approach views the international system as a stratified hierarchy where middle powers occupy the intermediate range between great powers and small states. Common indicators include Gross National Product (GNP/GDP), military expenditure, and population size (Baba & Önsoy, 2016). This realist perspective preordains a state’s role by its material capacity: middle powers possess the physical ability to disrupt or defend the system, yet lack the power to dominate it (Holbraad, 1971). The extant literature offers a plethora of such interpretations, consistently framing the role and structural position of middle powers within the international hierarchy through a similar analytical lens (De Bhal, 2023; Hynd, 2025).

Behavioral definitions, in contrast, identify middle powers by their diplomatic style rather than their size (Efstathopoulos, 2018). This approach defines middle powers by their tendency to pursue multilateral solutions, embrace compromise, and act as “good international citizens” (Abbondanza, 2021; Bolton & Nash, 2010; A. F. Cooper, 2015; D. A. Cooper, 2011; Efstathopoulos, 2018; Efstathopoulos & Mehmetcik, 2025; Nixon et al., 2018; Youde & Slagter, 2013). This “middlepowermanship” involves coalition-building, niche diplomacy, and serving as stabilizers or legitimizers of the global order (A. F. Cooper, 1997; Efstathopoulos, 2018).

This distinction is critical because, as Chapnick (1999) argues, conflating the positional and behavioral leads to circular reasoning that ignores states with the material capacity to act as middle powers but who choose unilateralism instead. While the literature predominantly characterizes middle powers as systemic stabilizers, the neorealist logic of the “Power Paradox” suggests that such cooperation is not immutable (Kutlay & Öniş, 2021; Mehmetcik, 2018).

The literature offers competing hypotheses regarding how material power influences multilateral commitment. The Functionalist/Liberal View suggests a positive relationship between capacity and contribution. The “functional principle,” advocated by Canadian diplomats in the 1940s, posited that a state’s voice in international decisions should correspond to its ability to contribute resources (Glazebrook, 1947). The Neorealist View, conversely, suggests that as states acquire greater material capabilities, their reliance on multilateral institutions may decrease (Newman, Thakur, & Tirman, 2006; Viola, 2025). Greater power affords states the autonomy to act unilaterally, reducing the necessity of binding themselves to multilateral frameworks. Within this framework, multilateralism functions as a strategy to amplify limited influence (Park, 2022). When a state’s material power grows significantly, it moves away from “followership” and toward greater autonomy, reducing its “good international citizen” behaviors (Deng, 2014).

Recent empirical studies lend weight to the hypothesis of a negative correlation. In a comparative study of six mid-range powers, Wang and French (2013) found that material power negatively impacts participation in global governance. Their data showed that states with higher GDP and military spending tended to act more as free-riders compared to less powerful but more active states. The literature on “Emerging Middle Powers” highlights how states like Turkey, as they experience rapid economic growth, may exhibit overconfidence that leads to unilateralism and a departure from the “benign” soft-power roles traditionally associated with middle powers (Öniş & Kutlay, 2017). Jordaan (2003) provides a crucial theoretical distinction, arguing that “Traditional” middle powers (e.g., Canada and Norway) are constitutively different from “Emerging” middle powers (e.g., South Africa and Brazil), suggesting that the correlation between power and multilateralism may function differently across these two clusters.

The present study builds on but is distinct from existing empirical work, most notably Wang and French’s (2013) cross-national analysis of material power and global governance participation. That study established the foundational finding that higher GDP and military spending are associated with reduced multilateral contribution, but its undifferentiated sample design collapsed structural differences between Traditional Western powers and Emerging Global South states into a single analytical frame. This paper advances that research program in three specific ways: (1) by introducing geopolitical cluster stratification as a design feature, allowing the first systematic test of whether the Power Paradox operates differently within and across Traditional and Emerging clusters; (2) by incorporating UN Peacekeeping contributions as a distinct indicator of security burden-sharing, which ODA-centric designs systematically underweight and which, as this study shows, is the dimension most sensitive to the Power Paradox effect in the Traditional cluster; and (3) by constructing an open-architecture index framework (MPI/MES) that can be directly extended to panel data, enabling longitudinal replication that the current cross-sectional design cannot provide.

Methodology

To test the Power Paradox, this study employs a quantitative framework based on cross-sectional data from 15 middle powers for 2024. The population is defined by the “Middle Power” category, excluding the United States and China. To test for structural variations in state behavior, the sample is stratified into two distinct clusters based on historical institutional positioning:

• Cluster A: Traditional Middle Powers—Established liberal democracies deeply embedded in the Western alliance system (Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Sweden).

Results

The statistical results reveal a complex relationship between material capabilities and multilateral behavior. The aggregate data suggests a broad directional trend consistent with the realist hypothesis, but the cluster-specific analysis reveals a deep structural divergence between traditional and emerging middle powers that the aggregate obscures.

Across the entire sample, the Spearman’s rank correlation between the MPI and MES is weakly negative (r = −0.082, p = 0.771). This result is not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, and the directionality provides only weak support for the general neorealist hypothesis at the aggregate level. The cluster-level analysis, however, reveals a more substantively interesting pattern.

Discussion

The direction and magnitude of the correlation observed in Cluster A (r = −0.600) is consistent with the theoretical proposition that the liberal multilateral identity of Traditional middle powers functions less as a fixed normative commitment and more as a strategic adaptation to limited material capacity. This is, importantly, a pattern the data suggests rather than confirms: the sample is too small for definitive causal attribution. Nevertheless, the divergence between Norway and Sweden (high MES, low relative MPI) and Canada and Australia (low MES, high relative MPI within the cluster) constitutes a theoretically salient signal. If replicated in panel data across a larger population of Traditional middle powers, this pattern would provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that, for Western states, multilateral burden-sharing intensity varies inversely with material security. The current analysis positions this as a directional hypothesis rather than an established finding.

The low peacekeeping ratios of Canada and Australia reveal a preference for “checkbook diplomacy” over “boots on the ground,” effectively outsourcing the physical risks of global security to the Global South. This behavior, if confirmed in longitudinal research, would suggest that the “liberal” character of Western middle powers is not an immutable normative trait but rather a function of limited material capacity that may erode as power grows.

The absence of correlation in Cluster B challenges the monolithic view of emerging powers as simple spoilers. Instead, the data is consistent with two distinct trajectories of ascent: the Revisionist Path (Turkey, Russia), in which material growth leads to unilateralism, confirming the Power Paradox identified by Öniş and Kutlay (2017); and the Institutionalist Path (India, Indonesia), in which rising material power appears to reinforce rather than undermine multilateral engagement. These states have effectively become the operational backbone of the liberal order’s security architecture through their peacekeeping contributions.

The data is consistent with—but does not confirm—a broader structural dynamic in which the disengagement of wealthy Traditional powers and the bifurcation of Emerging powers are jointly shifting the operational burden of global governance onto a narrow subset of Functionalist Southern states (India, Indonesia, and South Africa). This is a theoretically plausible extrapolation from the observed cluster profiles, rendered credible by the broader literature on burden-shifting in multilateral institutions (Newman et al., 2006; Wang & French, 2013). However, it requires longitudinal verification before it can be stated as an empirical finding. What the present data does establish is the cross-sectional pattern: in 2024, the states providing the highest per-capita peacekeeping contributions and MES scores relative to their MPI are disproportionately concentrated in the Emerging cluster’s Functionalist tier.

Conclusion

This study addressed a central theoretical puzzle: Does the “Middle Power” identity survive the acquisition of hard power? Through exploratory testing of the Power Paradox hypothesis across two distinct geopolitical clusters, this article has identified a structural pattern that, if replicated in future large-N designs, would challenge the foundations of liberal internationalism.

The exploratory evidence is consistent with the proposition that the “Good International Citizenship” often ascribed to Western middle powers is not a permanent normative trait but a strategic adaptation to limited capacity. The large negative correlation within the Traditional (Global North) cluster (r = −0.600) suggests—but does not confirm—that as states like Canada and Australia accumulate material capabilities, they retreat into transactionalism rather than doubling down on multilateral burden-sharing. In this sense, the “Power Paradox” may be a latent feature of established powers in the Global North, not merely a symptom of rising revisionism in the Global South.

Furthermore, the behavioral bifurcation of the Emerging (Global South) cluster reshapes our understanding of agency in the 21st century. The dichotomy between “Unilateralists” (e.g., Turkey and Russia) and “Functionalists” (e.g., India and Indonesia) demonstrates that the Global South is not a monolith of dissatisfaction. While some rising powers appear to use growing material capabilities to bypass the liberal order, others have become its operational backbone.

For policymakers committed to the preservation of a rules-based order, these findings—understood as hypotheses warranting further empirical investigation—suggest a strategic pivot. Efforts to revitalize multilateralism must address the potential “free-riding” of wealthy traditional powers, linking the material capabilities of states like Canada and Australia more directly to the physical costs of global governance, particularly in peacekeeping and refugee burden-sharing. The international community must also move beyond viewing the Global South solely as recipients of governance, granting states like Indonesia and India institutional recognition commensurate with the physical burden-sharing they already subsidize through personnel contributions.

The crisis of the liberal order is, as this exploratory analysis suggests, partly a crisis of conversion: the transmission mechanism converting material power (MPI) into multilateral engagement (MES) appears to have weakened in the North and fractured in the South. Confirming this hypothesis, understanding its structural drivers, and identifying policy levers to reverse it are tasks for a next generation of large-N, longitudinal middle power research.

Supplemental Material