“Rising Powers” in International Politics: Which Powers Are Rising and Are They Challengers to the Liberal World Order?

The concept of “rising powers” has occupied much of the recent post-Cold War literature, with no fewer than 18 different states identified by scholars as falling into the rising powers category. Yet, the concept and its operationalization have been substantially underspecified in the literature. We develop an approach to conceptualizing and identifying rising powers by integrating work on status clubs, major powers, regional powers, and an opportunity-willingness framework. Then, we apply the framework to the post-Cold War international system and search for trajectories that would indicate that these 18 states are moving into the most prestigious clubs, or if already in, moving upwards in the hierarchy within the major power club. Except for China (which is already in the major power club and moving up in its hierarchy), we find little evidence that any of the other states specified in the literature meet our criteria for rising powers and are therefore significant potential challenges to the American order.