CWP alum Manjari Chatterjee Miller on WBUR discussing "'middle power' countries"

CHAKRABARTI: It's really great to have you. Well, let me just start off with this sort of general question in terms of how would you define what a middle power is these days?

MILLER: That's a great question especially because it's amazing to me as an academic how middle power has become the word of the day, the phrase of the day, until Mr. Carney's speech in Davos earlier this this year very few people really talked about middle powers in the policy world, right? Middle powers was an area of research for academics. And so, to be quite frank with you, when we talk about middle powers, there's no fabulous one-size-fits-all definition.

Sometimes, particularly, we call a middle power a middle power because it calls itself a middle power. So, Canada for years has called itself a middle power. But what we do know, just looking at the research on middle powers, is that it's not about one thing. It's not about the size necessarily, right?

"Are 'middle power' countries having a moment?" by Claire Donnelly & Meghna Chakrabarti July 21, 2026

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is Professor of international relations, and the inaugural Munk Chair in Global India at the Munk School. She is a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. She is also an associate at the Asia Center, Harvard University. An expert on India, China, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021, shortlisted for the 2022 Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations), Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013), and the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020). 

Previously, Miller was a tenured associate professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, and the director of the Rising Powers Initiative at the Pardee Center, Boston University. She has also been a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a fellow at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, a visiting associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed and policy journals, and chapters in edited books. She serves on the international advisory board of Chatham House's International Affairs journal and the editorial board of the National Bureau of Asian Research's Asia Policy journal, and her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from multiple institutions. A frequent contributor to media and policy outlets in the United States and abroad, from 2020-2024 Miller was a columnist for the Hindustan Times. Miller received a BA from the University of Delhi, an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD from Harvard University. She was a post-doctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University. 

Photo Credit: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2026/07/21/middle-power-countries