Susan Strange

Susan Strange was a scholar of international political economy whose work explains how authority can operate through markets and structures as well as formal state decisions. She was an analyst of power, not a public authority or operator of economic coercion.

Structural power

In States and Markets, Strange distinguished relational power, the capacity to make another actor do something, from structural power, the capacity to shape the frameworks within which actors decide. She organised structural power around four connected structures: security, production, finance and knowledge. Control over credit, production location, information and protection can define the options available to states and firms before any explicit threat is made.

This framework is useful to economic statecraft because it identifies the infrastructure beneath individual measures. Currency systems, financial centres, corporate networks and knowledge standards can distribute bargaining power. Structural advantage, however, is not evidence of a deliberate campaign. Intent, authority and mechanism still require separate proof.

States, firms and finance

Strange rejected a clean division between public authority and private markets. Rival States, Rival Firms, written with John Stopford and John Henley, examined bargaining among governments and multinational companies over investment and production. This analysis helps explain why firms can be intermediaries, targets or sources of leverage without becoming state agents.

Her financial work treated market expansion as a political transformation. Casino Capitalism examined instability associated with liberalised global finance. Mad Money extended the account of financial innovation, regulatory weakness and mobile capital. In "The persistent myth of lost hegemony", Strange argued that conventional measures understated continuing United States structural power.

Use and limits

Strange's concepts broaden the field beyond tariffs, sanctions and aid. They direct attention to who sets rules, provides liquidity, controls knowledge and determines access. They also impose a discipline: structural dependence can create leverage without compellence, and a private market outcome can redistribute power without state direction.

Claims that Strange founded international political economy or originated structural-power analysis require attributed disciplinary evidence. The stronger proposition is narrower. Her work supplied a durable vocabulary for analysing power that is embedded in political economy rather than exercised only through formal commands.

The four structures also prevent finance from becoming an all-purpose explanation. Security affects who can protect exchange and enforce order. Production affects where value is created and who controls technology and employment. Finance affects the creation and allocation of credit. Knowledge affects what actors accept as legitimate, possible or technically necessary. These structures interact, but an analyst must still identify the relevant institution and mechanism.

Her argument about United States power illustrates the method. Strange challenged accounts of simple national decline by looking beyond trade balances and territorial resources to structural positions in security, production, finance and knowledge. The claim was analytical and contested, not a prediction that every United States government could compel any target. Structural advantage may be latent, uneven or costly to activate.

For this encyclopedia, Strange is therefore a boundary marker. Her work explains the environment in which statecraft operates while preserving the difference between background power, bargaining and an intentional economic measure. That distinction stops network centrality or market dominance from being mislabelled as warfare without evidence of purpose and action.

See also

Network centrality advantage · Financial warfare · Rise and fall of economic statecraft · State-owned enterprises as statecraft instruments · Economic statecraft

Sources

1. London School of Economics Department of International Relations, Professor Susan Strange, 1923-1998: a tribute, 17 October 2017.
2. Susan Strange, *States and Markets*, first published 1988.
3. Susan Strange, *Casino Capitalism*, first published 1986.
4. Susan Strange, *Mad Money*, first published 1998.
5. Susan Strange, The persistent myth of lost hegemony, International Organization 41, no. 4 (1987).
6. John M. Stopford, Susan Strange and John S. Henley, *Rival States, Rival Firms: Competition for World Market Shares*, Cambridge University Press, 1991.