| Sumari: | <p>Do regions enable or constrain states’ claims to status? Looking for answers in the regional power literature, current scholarship in International Relations remains divided. On one hand, regions enable the consolidation of power in a specific geographic space, making states regional hegemons, therefore strengthening their claims to status. On the other hand, regions involve troublesome neighbourhoods, or the spill-over effects of unresolved conflicts which can constrain claims to status. Based on this debate, states would be expected to either work hard at being regional powers, or, to disentangle themselves from the responsibility. It seems however, that states do neither and yet both. Drawing on the Indian case, this thesis establishes that states find regions to be potentially status-enabling, but not just as spaces in which they can achieve hegemony. As geographic collectives, they offer the important function of social recognition that allows them to be differentiated from others to global audiences. Anchored in a constructivist approach, this thesis argues that states find value in ‘building’ or ‘framing’ regions in specific ways to their claims to status at the global level. By mapping boundaries through the region-building process, states forge a sense of commonality and group membership allowing them to be recognised in a specific way by targeted audiences. Through its qualitative and historically informed study of Indian region-building across time, this thesis notes that since independence, Indian framings of its ‘region’ have shifted to include ‘Asia’, ‘South Asia’, ‘Asia-Pacific’ and most recently the ‘Indo-Pacific’. It demonstrates how the changing notions of its region have informed its claims to status at the global level over time. It studies three cases Indian region-building: ‘Asia’ in the early Cold War
years and ‘Asia-Pacific’ in the Post-Cold War years and the ‘Indo-Pacific’ in recent years. Within these the first two cases, it investigates India’s understudied role in Indonesian decolonisation struggle (1945-1949) and India’s Look-East policy in 1991. Given the contemporary and evolving nature of its Indo-Pacific case, this thesis engages with it as whole to demonstrate how it informs Indian claims to higher status at the global level.</p>
|
|---|