This article examines Australia’s pursuit of greater agency through four mutually reinforcing forms of strategic institutional innovation: institutional layering, institutional nesting, hybrid alignment, and values-based regional anchoring. Institutional layering enables Australia to enhance partner security and support regional stability through bilateral agreements and minilateral platforms while avoiding unnecessary provocation of major powers. Institutional nesting embeds these mechanisms within broader multilateral frameworks, strengthening legitimacy and regional acceptance. Hybrid alignment combines hard security commitments with soft power and non-traditional cooperation, while deepening and diversifying bilateral partnerships. Values-based anchoring promotes key narratives of Indo–Pacific regionalism, including support for a rules-based order, freedom of navigation, and peaceful dispute resolution. Together, these innovations illustrate how Australia has assumed an emerging role as an Indo–Pacific regional power amid Asia’s evolving geopolitical environment, shaped by China’s rise and growing uncertainty over US regional policy. From a theoretical perspective, the article outlines the potential utility and limitations of minilateralism, and its combination with other institutional innovations, in enabling regional powers to influence the evolving architecture of the Indo–Pacific regional order.
Strating et al. (2026) studied this question.