Sovereignty Entrepreneurship: How Middle Powers Build International Legitimacy & Where Pakistan Fits

Ricardo René Larémont is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Binghamton University, SUNY, and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, where he studied under Juan J. Linz and David E. Apter, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Professor Larémont's current work develops the concept of sovereignty entrepreneurship, a framework explaining how states cultivate international legitimacy through active diplomacy rather than legal argument or formal recognition alone. Drawing on his forthcoming book Morocco and the Politics of Recognition, the session extends the analysis comparatively to Pakistan, Türkiye, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

• Recognition as a political process, not a single juridical event
• Coalition-building, institutional engagement, and portfolio diplomacy
• Middle-power statecraft in an emerging multipolar order
• Where Pakistan's diplomatic assets sit and what they are not yet doing

He is the author of four monographs and editor of nine volumes, with more than fifty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has attracted over $2.8 million in competitive research funding. He has briefed the U.S. Department of State, the National Intelligence Council, the U.S. Army War College, and the European Commission, and has lectured across four continents.