POSITIONING SOUTH AFRICA IN INTERNATIONAL HIERARCY: NEWLY EMERGING MIDDLE POWER

The emergence of unipolarity in the international order with the US hegemony as the winner of the cold war and the positioning pursuit of the third world countries, that have been excluded from the international order and have been marginalized throughout history, have made to question the course of power balance again by gaining momentum with the 2008 crisis. The 2008 crisis has also made it clear that international economic governance cannot continue only with the leading industrial zone and it has clearly revealed with all its destructive effects there is a need for cooperation with new markets and with emerging economies. While the unipolar world order is changing, the international hierarchy created by the new actors emerging in global governance becomes more apparent with BRICS. BRICS countries, which emerged as the rising powers since the 2000s, have a great say in global governance today, while it is claimed that South Africa does not match the ‘rising power’ identity within the BRICS structure. The main reason for these claims is that South Africa has significant differences from other BRICS countries in terms of international economic and political integration. In order to understand these differences, the definition of the ‘rising power’ and ‘middle power’ identifications should be well understood. South Africa's participation in BRICS as of 2013 makes it compulsory to think about South Africa and therefore the two important concepts mentioned in the literatüre. The aim of this study is to analyze the structural and behavioral requirements of concepts in order to explain the semantic confusion of the concepts of ‘rising power’ and ‘middle power’ in the literature and to reveal the identity of South Africa in BRICS structure