Journal Articles

2025   Hynd, A. ‘Repositioning Middle Powers in International Hierarchies of Status and Order’, International Relations (Online First).

Abstract: This article develops a framework for theorising middle power identity formation. It contends that middle power identity formation has frequently been driven by both the pursuit of elevated positions within hierarchies of status, and by the construction, (re)organisation and navigation of hierarchies of order. The role of three essential concepts driving middle power identity formation are highlighted: middle power identity entrepreneurs, middle power identity narratives and periods of middle power identity ignition. Through application to the case of South Korea, it finds that structural change and elite activism combined to form a new middle power identity from 1987 to 2013. This identity change was driven by attempts to reposition the country in international society’s status community; while simultaneously renegotiating the terms of the country’s subordination to the US and attempting to initiate superordinate roles over North Korea and Southeast Asia.

2023   Hynd, A. & D. Connolly, ‘Domination for the Rest? Creating and Contesting Secondary State Led International Hierarchies’, International Studies Quarterly 67 (4), sqad098.

Abstract: Existing literature on international hierarchies has focused on great powers, hitherto overlooking those hierarchies led by secondary states. Secondary states lack the capabilities and geostrategic reach of their great power counterparts but nevertheless seek to create subordinate relationships in their immediate regions. We argue that in doing so secondary states draw on strategic toolkits that involve the creation of shared communities and the intensification of material dependencies between superordinate and subordinate. However, more so than great powers, secondary states do not get things all their own way. Recognizing the agency of even the weakest of states, we further contend that potential subordinates employ a range of resistance techniques—which we call firewalls and dissonance strategies. We elaborate on these strategies, and conclude our argument, by applying the theoretical model presented here to the novel case of the Sunshine Policy—a decade of inter-Korean hierarchy formation, contestation, and resistance from 1998 to 2008 in which we claim that South Korea attempted, and ultimately stalled, in its efforts to establish itself in a hierarchical relationship with North Korea.

2023   Connolly, D. & A. Hynd, ‘The Construction and Enforcement of East Asia’s Air Defence Identification Zones: Grey Volumes in the Sky?’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 41 (5), 1029-1046.

Abstract: The declaration of China’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over portions of the East China Sea in 2013 has often been interpreted by international relations scholars as an aggressive “land grab” in the sky. However, classical geopolitical perspectives of territory and control, despite their popularity when analyzing the politics of East Asia, fail to present a full understanding of ADIZ creation, adjustment, maintenance, and contestation. Rather than a problem created by the rise of China, conflicts over airspace are a regional phenomenon. By engaging with the critical geography literature on airspace, verticality, and space production, this paper theorizes ADIZs as the partial extension of state sovereignty via assemblages in response to the emergence of new vertical threats and opportunities. It then shows how the Cold War consensus on the function and performance of these volumes has broken down in East Asia, which has paradoxically encouraged both the expansion of ADIZs as well as their systematic violation. These “grey volumes,” which are characterized by debates over the legality, function, and performance of airspace, are explored in a case study of the ADIZs of Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Ultimately, these patchworks of ambiguous and overlapping airspaces are difficult to reconcile with classical geopolitics’ one-dimensional assumptions of sovereignty and territory.