(Re) emerging powers towards a polycentric world: Russia and Turkey vs. Latin America

Abstract

During the last years, world politics has witnessed a dual displacement of the geo-economic axis from the West to the East and, from the Developed North to the Global South; and a systemic change from aunipolarity towards a more polycentric and regionalized world. A set of rising powers developed domestic and external efforts to increase their material and non-material capabilities, which were translating to the regional and international arena with a greater voice and increasing their bargaining position with the established powers. Russia and Turkey has reflected the ambitions and activism of the emerging powers, especially in relation to the search for a novel status, and the progressive enlargement of their influence in regional orders hegemonized by western great powers.Latin America has been simultaneously – a regional actor increasingly autonomous from United States, and a recipient of the efforts of the new, and not so new, rising powers, indicated by the case of Russia and Turkey respectively. They carried out an active, pragmatic and assertive foreign policy in Latin America, challenging the regional status of the Western powers. This article problematize the issue of the growing activism of the non-Western rising powers in Latin America, presenting an analysis of the causal mechanisms that have led Russia and Turkey to increase its presence in the region during the period 2006-2014.