“The persistent myth of lost hegemony,” revisited: structural power as a complex network phenomenon

Abstract

This article resuscitates the idea of structural power in world politics by linking it to modern complex network science, presents a theoretical framework for understanding how global structures develop and change, and empirically analyzes the prominence of leading states within global finance, trade, security, and knowledge networks. It argues that the “fitness plus preferential attachment” (FPA) model of complex network evolution provides a logical explanation for the durability of American influence even as some of its advantages in country-level capabilities has eroded, and it introduces a network methodology that is capable of empirically analyzing the organizational complexity that exists within and across domains in world politics. It argues that the rise of China and other emerging powers has been overstated in some ways, but that a redistribution of structural prominence is taking place, in some domains, as emerging markets increase their transnational connections; this has mostly come at the relative expense of Europe, however, rather than the United States.

Hegemonic instability: complex interdependence and the dynamics of financial crisis in the contemporary international system

“…The network reconceptualization of complex interdependence is a promising new theoretical development (Oatley, 2019) that has already produced new insights into a central debate in the early IR literature on complex interdependence: the status of American hegemony. 1 By employing bilateral international data to map international trade, production, energy, and financial networks, scholars have challenged long-running speculation about the decline of American hegemony by noting that many of these international networks are still organized asymmetrically and hierarchically around the United States (Amador and Cabral, 2017; Oatley et al, 2013; Winecoff, 2015, 2020; Zhong et al, 2016). Network studies of the international economy suggest that comparing national level data produces an incomplete picture of the distribution of international power, especially of the power that America wields via its economic relationships with other countries.…”

“… 18. Winecoff (2020) is a great example of research that elaborates the importance of contemporary complex interdependence for conferring broader notions of power, such as structural power. …”

Bad influence: social networks, elite brokerage, and the construction of alliances

“…Another is to put it in the modern context and explore similar mechanisms in the United States and China’s growing strategic rivalry (Allison, 2017; Beckley, 2018; Brands and Cooper, 2019; Brooks and Wohlforth, 2016; Christensen, 2006; Glaser, 2015; Kirshner, 2012; Mattis, 2018; Schweller and Pu, 2011; Shambaugh, 2018). As Winecoff (2020) demonstrates in this issue, network approaches are well-suited to illustrating less apparent dimensions of this great-power competition. Geo-economic competition and the weaponization of interdependence are already attracting growing interest from the academic and policy scholars (Blackwill and Harris, 2016; Farrell and Newman, 2019; Wright, 2017).…”

Domestic courts, transnational law, and international order

“…It is no coincidence that these two jurisdictions also play central roles in global financial networks or that, at different stages over the past century, they have operated as the economic hegemon. Global economic and legal structures appear to be mutually reinforcing (Winecoff 2020).…”