In its 30th anniversary year, the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan unveiled a new monograph titled “Widening the Scope: How Middle Powers are Changing Liberal Institutionalism.” This work expands an understanding of the role of “middle powers” in altering the logic and functioning of the current world order, which is based on international institutions. The author, Miras Zhienbaev, a Kazakh specialist in international relations and international political economy, provides a comprehensive analysis of how middle powers influence the formation and reform of international institutions and the global governance system.
The foreword of the book was written by the Founding President of NU and former Vice President of the World Bank, Shigeo Katsu. “The fate of our planet is too important to leave it in the hands of just two or so countries, as powerful as they may be. Miras Zhiyenbayev offers a compelling narrative for middle-power democracies: they have agency. Their leadership roles in a post-U.S. hegemony world will be ever more important, a proposition that is both timely and provocative,” – Katsu noted.
This book received widespread recognition from the international academic and expert community after its first presentation during the inaugural Central Asian Forum on Security and Cooperation organized by KazISS on July 13-14. More than 60 speakers from approximately 25 countries received copies of the monograph during the Forum, acknowledging the significance of the key ideas and hypotheses presented for the theory of international relations.
“Widening the Scope” was included in the catalog of novelties of the United Nations (UN) Archives and Library, which is the largest library within the UN’s structure and a repository of global knowledge on multilateralism, featuring 11 thousand unique works on the theory of international relations, each presented as a single copy.
