The Dynamics of Power Politics

Professor Stacie Goddard from Wellesley College will give a presentation at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.

Summary: This seminar will give an overview of an in-process book manuscript, The Dynamics of Power Politics (with Paul MacDonald and Daniel Nexon), which develops a relational-network approach to power political mobilization. Much of international relations theories assume that states have access to “stocks” of power, that military, economic, and diplomatic tools are readily available and ready to deploy in power-political competition. Professor Goddard will discuss how scholars should orient their analysis of great power competition around processes of collective mobilization and demobilization, with the goal of identifying the strategies of mobilization that replicate across time and space.