This dissertation attempts to rethink fundamentally the identities, interests, and institutions in which dimensions of international leadership occur in order to reveal how leadership is accorded, managed, and transformed. I attempt to answer this question through an examination of what I term "recognition-based leadership," in which regional powers seek the concessions of neighbors in an effort to drive foreign policy preferences and behavior within their respective regions. I rely on three empirical cases to reflect varying contexts in which the level of leadership recognition attained by the regional power predicts specific regional power behavior, as well as particular outcomes within the region. I argue that different levels of leadership recognition can be categorized into three stages: the establishment stage, the management stage, and the delegation stage. All of these stages are examined with the context of regional counterterrorism processes. The overall contribution of this study furthers our understanding of how regional powers might behave depending upon the leadership stage their RSC finds itself in with regards to the issue-area under focus. By concentrating on the differentiation between interest consideration, external competition, and internal mechanisms to drive state behavior throughout these stages, I am able not only to draw insights out of these recognition-based processes, but also, and perhaps most importantly, to assess the direction in which the regional order as a whole is headed.