Joining the club? Comparing the emphasis on the Global North and South in the summit diplomacy of South Africa, Brazil, China, and India (1998-2019)

Abstract

Status is an important factor for the emerging powers of the Global South and they seek to increase their international standing by revising the global hierarchy. At the same time, they must choose among international strategies: to imitate, challenge or follow alternatives of international mobility in relation to the great powers. Faced with this dilemma, how much have emerging powers prioritized the Global South and North over time? Knowing that presidential diplomacy is one of the status markers of the contemporary international system, this study tested the following hypothesis: international organizations from the Global South received, on average, more visits from heads of state/government of emerging powers than other types of organization. We monitored the presidential diplomacy of South Africa, Brazil, China and India between 1998 and 2019. The number of visits by heads of state/government was collected through secondary data bases, the Rising Powers Diplomatic Network and China Visits. The hypothesis was tested through descriptive statistics, generating a stable longitudinal metric to monitor the degree of prioritization between destinations in the North or South by the four countries analyzed. The results indicate that the average number of visits to the Global South was higher for South Africa (59.9% of visits), Brazil (55.7%), China (53.3%), but not for India (44.4%). The findings indicate that emerging powers, in general, prioritized destinations in the Global South in comparison to those in the Global North, validating our working hypothesis.