Sören Scholvin

Secondary Powers vis-à-vis South Africa: Hard Balancing, Soft Balancing, Rejection of Followership, and Disregard of Leadership

GIGA Working Papers | 2017


  • Series

    GIGA Working Papers

    Series Number

    306

    Number of Pages

    31

    Publisher

    German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

    Location

    Hamburg

    The Presidents of Kenya and South Africa at a press conference during a meeting.
    © Reuters / Siegfried Modola

    Abstract

    The second‐most powerful states in regional hierarchies – or “secondary powers” – can be expected to contest against hegemons. In this paper, I assess the power that secondary powers in sub‐Saharan Africa wield vis‐à‐vis South Africa and suggest that their intended and unintended contestation can be captured as hard balancing, soft balancing, rejection of followership, and disregard of leadership. Angola’s foreign policy is marked by a mix of these types of contestation and a recent shift towards soft balancing, which results from Angola’s increasing economic influence in some regional countries. Kenya might reject followership or even hard‐balance in economic affairs but has not done so yet. Nigerian–South African relations are characterised by a disregard of South African leadership, especially in security policy, and unintended economic soft balancing.

    Sören Scholvin

    Sören Scholvin

    Former GIGA Team member


    Download


    Notification

    Sign up to receive email notifications about GIGA activities

    Social Media

    Follow us