Beyond the BICs: identifying the ‘emerging middle powers’ and understanding their role in global poverty reduction

Much attention has been focused on the BICs (that is, Brazil, India and China) and how they are changing global politics and economics. However, there is also a further tier of emerging, or new, middle powers ‘beyond the BICs’ that are playing a more prominent role in regional and global arenas. They tend to be active only within certain policy areas, since these new middle powers lack the economic and demographic weight of the BICs. In this paper we set out why it is necessary to recognise these new middle powers and the role they play in global development, and examine the economic, institutional and ideational factors that may be seen as characterising the emerging middle concept. We put forward some first steps towards identifying which countries should be considered to fall within this category, and discuss the implications of the emerging middle power concept for traditional middle power theory.