Bulletin n. 1/2012
June 2012
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Below Katharina, et. al.
    Der Aufstieg der BIC-Staaten als Wissensmächte?
    in Zeitschrift für Politik , Jahrgang 59, Heft 1, 2012 ,  2012
    Summary The further economic and political rise of Brazil, India and China (BIC) increasingly depends on their ability to prevail in the fierce international competition for innovation because »knowledge« has become a decisive factor in international politics. In order to evaluate whether the BICs are catching up in the fields of knowledge and technology, a theoretical concept of »knowledge power« is proposed that consists of two components, namely technological innovation capacity and the ability to control the global knowledge structure. The former is reflected in the education system, the research potentials and the effective commercialization of knowledge within a specific economy, while the latter can be measured through a country´s specific position in the global knowledge structure. Innovation capacity and structural power are both assumed to be unevenly distributed throughout the international system. Consequently, certain states hold more knowledge power, i.e. possess more options for action and self-assertion and can profoundly influence the environment of other actors. Based on this framework several indicators are selected to explore the BICs development as knowledge powers. The BIC countries indeed are on their way towards building their own powerful technological innovation capacity. However, in terms of the control over the global knowledge structure, they still remain quite marginalized. In sum, the pace at which the gap between BIC countries and the industrial nations is being closed is much less rapid and alarming than often portrayed in the media. Yet these general trends nonetheless should attract the strategic attention of Germany and other industrial nations to reorganizing their policies in order to adapt to a changed distribution of global knowledge power and to profit from the various advantages inherent in these developments.
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