Beyond the great powers: how South American states are navigating US-China competition in the 21st century
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Abstract
What explains smaller states’ approaches to great power competition? Why have states not aligned with the US and China? Drawing on three case studies in South America, this dissertation finds that states are pursuing one of three non-alignment patterns and argues that political elites’ ideas, interest group politics, and the construction of state identity drive these outcomes. Recent scholarship’s articulation of a hedging strategy for navigating great power competition is an important departure from a balancing-bandwagoning binary, but it draws almost exclusively from East and Southeast Asia. By expanding the geographical scope to Latin America, this dissertation uncovers new variation in states’ non-alignment patterns. The project theorizes two additional categories of non-alignment: diversification, in which states pursue parallel policies with both great powers and disclaim any role in competition, and concentration, in which they prioritize one great power and deploy critical rhetoric towards the other to cover continuing relations. Comparative case studies of Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador incorporate evidence from nearly 90 interviews with policymakers and interest groups leaders, policy documents, party platforms, and major newspapers to trace the policymaking process. The cases demonstrate that these patterns result from a complex domestic political process involving ideas, interests, and narratives. In addition to interest group politics, political elites are heavily influenced by the ideas they hold about the operating mechanisms of the international system – i.e. the degree to which it is a zero-sum game – and about the role of the rising power in that system, chiefly whether or not it constitutes a security threat. These factors are channeled through an overarching narrative about a state’s identity and positionality in the international system, which legitimizes certain patterns of non-alignment while foreclosing others. Overall, this project demonstrates that smaller states have an important role in the process and outcomes of great power competition, and that the structure of the international system is a permissive, but not determining, factor in how they design and implement their foreign policies.
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2025