Middle power, status-seeking and role conceptions: the cases of Indonesia and South Korea

This paper examines how role theory can enhance the middle power literature in understanding the role preferences of middle powers. Rather than treating it as merely a function of material capability or good international citizenship, this paper resituates middle power as a concept of international status that states aim to pursue through the enactment of role conceptions. Thus, it reinstates a conceptual distinction between ‘Middle Power Status’ and ‘Middle Power Roles’. The paper suggests that the notion of role conceptions can analytically connect the status-seeking behaviour of middle powers with their foreign policy agenda. In so doing, it provides a more nuanced explanation of middle power behaviour, which might differ between one middle power and another. Using Indonesia and South Korea as case studies of middle power, this paper contends that foreign policymakers have strategically conceptualised and enacted several main roles that aim to capture historical experience, as well as ego and alter expectations in order to pursue middle power status. These role conceptions determine the foreign policy agenda of states in articulating their middle power status.