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2 Sachs, Goldman, BRICs and Beyond (London 2007)Google Scholar . This study also includes the ‘Next-11’: Mexico, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. See also, Deutsche Bank Research, ‘Globale Wachstumszentren 2020. Formel-G für 34 Volkswirtschaften’ Aktuelle Themen No. 313, Frankfurt (2005).

3 The ‘BRIC plus’ include Brazil, Russia, India, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey; Shaw, Timothy M., Cooper, Andrew F., and Antkiewicz, Agata, ‘Global and/or Regional Development at the Start of the 21st Century? China, India and (South) Africa’, Third World Quarterly, 28:7 (2007), pp. 1255–1270CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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13 See the special issue of International Affairs, 82:1 (2006) on regional and emerging powers.

14 The internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia presents the most all-embracing list of regional powers. The list includes India, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, France, United Kingdom Germany, Russia. Pastor, Robert. A. (ed.), A Century's Journey. How the Great Powers Shape the World (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 25Google Scholar . includes among the regional powers: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan. China is ranked as a great power.

15 More than ten years ago Barry Buzan remarked: ‘The concept of region is widely used and seldom very clearly defined.’ Buzan, Barry, ‘The Asia-Pacific: what sort region in what sort of world?’, in Brook, Christopher and McGrew, Anthony (eds), Asia-Pacific in the New World Order (London: Routledge 1998), p. 68Google Scholar . The same applies for much of the current debate on regions in international politics. For a summary of the current research with regard to the study of regions and future research topics see Fawn, Rick, ‘Regions” and their study: wherefrom, what for and whereto?’, Review of International Studies, 35:S1 (2009), pp. 5–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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17 Hurrell, ‘One world’.

18 Nel, Philip and Stephen, Matthew, ‘Agents of Change? The Foreign Economic Policies of the IBSA States’, in Flemes, Daniel (ed.), Regional Leadership in the Global System: Ideas, Interests and Strategies of Regional Powers (Aldershot: Ashgate 2010), pp. 71–90Google Scholar .

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27 ‘A middle power is a power with such military strength, resources and strategic position that in peacetime the great powers bid for its support, and in wartime, while it has no hope of winning a war against a great power, it can hope to inflict costs on a great power out of proportion to what the great power can hope to gain by attacking it.’ Wight, ‘Power Politics’, p. 65. Other authors emphasise size (population) and economic power (GDP) as long-term preconditions for middle-power status. See, Kelly, Paul, ‘Punching Above Our Weight’, Policy, 20:2 (2004), pp. 29–34Google Scholar .

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31 Lemke's definition of a region is very restrictive, based on the power projection capabilities of states, and results in a great number of small regions.

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33 Buzan and Wæver, ‘Regions’.

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38 Lemke, ‘Regions’, p. 22.

39 Kugler and Organski, ‘Power Transition’.

40 Power is a combination of the population (number), the economic productivity (GDP per capita) and the effectiveness of the political system (political capacity) to mobilise human and material resources.

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52 With regard to Southeast Asia see, Goh, ‘Great Powers’.

53 Hurrell, ‘Some Reflections’, pp. 3–4.

54 Hurrell, ‘Hegemony’, p. 11.

55 According to Keohane's, Robert O. ‘Lilliputians’ Dilemmas: Small States in International Politics’, International Organizations, 23:2 (1969), p. 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar , a middle power is ‘a state whose leaders consider that it cannot act alone effectively, but may be able to have a systemic impact in a small group or through an international institution’.

56 Huntington, ‘Lonely Superpower’.

57 Especially as we can identify a trend since the 1990s towards stronger interregional networks of middle powers. See Cooper, ‘Niche diplomacy’, pp. 17–9.

58 Nye, ‘Powers to lead’.

59 Hurrell, ‘Some Reflections’, p. 3.

60 Schirm, ‘Führungsindikatoren’; Schirm, ‘Leaders’.

61 See Lemke, Douglas, ‘Dimensions of Hard Power: Regional Leadership and Material Capabilities’, in Flemes, Daniel (ed.), Regional Leadership in the Global System: Ideas, Interests and Strategies of Regional Powers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 31–50Google Scholar .

62 Goh, ‘Great Powers’.

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71 Aaron L. Friedberg coined the concept of ‘multi-multipolarity’ to capture the power diffusion both at the global and the regional level. See Friedberg, Aaron L., ‘Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia’, International Security, 18:3 (1993–1994), pp. 5–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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80 Acharya, ‘Emerging Regional Architecture’, p. 651.

81 See Adler, Emanuel and Greve, Patricia, ‘When security community meets balance of power: overlapping regional mechanisms of security governance’, Review of International Studies, 35:S1 (2009), pp. 59–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Tussie, ‘Latin America’.

82 See Goh, ‘Great Powers’.

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85 Cooper and Antkiewicz, ‘Emerging Powers’; Germain, ‘Financial order’; Subacchi, Paola, ‘New power centres and new power brokers: are they shaping a new economic order?’, International Affairs, 84:3 (2008), pp. 485–498CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Paola Subacchi and Eric Helleiner, ‘From London to L'Aquila. Building a Bridge between the G20 and the G8’, Chatham/CIGI Briefing paper, Waterloo (June 2009).

86 See Philip Nel and Matthew Stephen, ‘Agents of Change’.