The Power and Peril of Regional Hegemony

• In Event: Economic, Military, and Institutional Intervention in Great Power Competition

Abstract

Regional powers are strongly motivated by the distribution of power in their neighborhood, but the ways that they act on these motivations are conditioned by their relations with the great powers, which can affect the distribution of aid and security balancing among local rivals. This paper considers the unique incentives that occur when the regional distribution of power is highly concentrated and how this differs from other distributions of power. As regional powers approach hegemony in their near abroad, they face fewer threats from regional peers and stronger incentives to exclude great powers from exerting influence in their region that might diminish their own; for great powers, though, regional hegemons are attractive partners that can act as conduits to the region and important swing states in great power competitions, but threatening if they pursue policies contrary to the great powers’ interests. Regional powers can exploit this set of incentives to hedge their relations with great powers and maximize their returns, but if they disalign themselves from the great powers, they risk tension and conflict with one or more powerful states. These principles are tested with a crossnational quantitative analysis of an original dataset of states’ conflict behavior in the Middle East from 1945 through 2010 and a case study of Egyptian foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s, and implications are considered for structural theories of international politics and the shifting distribution of power in the international system.

Author

• John Dana Stuster, Naval War College