Norms in Great Power Competition: Peaceful Change in a Spheres of Influence World

This chapter uses spheres of influence as an analytical lens to assess the prospects for peaceful change in an international system increasingly characterized by great power rivalry. The main argument is that the prospects for peaceful change depend on the compatibility of states’ expectations of what spheres of influence are and ought to be, and their willingness to negotiate and compromise on these expectations. I argue that spheres of influence entail repertoires of expectations regarding appropriate behavior, relative influence and gains, and contributions to the maintenance and development of the sphere. In doing so they create challenges and opportunities for dominance, resistance, and peaceful change. Spheres of influence are negotiated hegemonies reflecting different compromises on what international affairs is and ought to be. For this reason, they are sites of contestation and negotiation: horizontally between great powers agreeing and disagreeing on common rules for all spheres in the
international system and how much action space to allow hegemons in their respective spheres of influence, and vertically between the sphere’s hegemon and small states and middle powers located inside the sphere.