Description
Following the end of the Cold War, strategic partnerships (SPs) have emerged in international politics as a new type of engagement among states and have proliferated especially since the early 2000s.
Nonetheless, contrary to the burgeoning practice of strategic partnerships, scholarly studies fall behind to offer a comprehensive understanding of this matter. This is mainly because of a lack of theoretical discussions and excessive attention to particular dyadic partnerships.
In this article, I aim to offer a theoretically informed account originating from Social Exchange Theory to explain factors that drive actors to involve in strategic partnerships and roles that strategic partnerships play in actors’ foreign policies.
I argue that actors’ partnering behaviours most importantly vary depending on their ranking according to relative capabilities in the international system. Accordingly, I introduce three partnering rationales correspondence to the partnering behaviours of a superpower, rising powers, and middle powers respectively. Finally, I explore these three categories in the US, China, and Australia’s partnering behaviours in a comparative manner.
