Power analysis and power shifts
Despite widespread consensus that the international system is undergoing a significant shift in the distribution of power, there is significant debate around the extent and nature of those shifts, and how to measure them, and the implications for the strategies of rising and declining powers alike.
This project clarifies the sources of empirical disagreement within the power shifts debate and evaluates strategic responses to power transition. This research underpins the development of multi-dimensional conceptual foundations and methodological tools to support rigorous programmes of power analysis and strategic net assessment.
Research outputs
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2026) 'National Power Analysis'. Prepared for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2026) 'Approaches to Measuring Power', UK OFFICIAL. Prepared for Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2024) 'Making Net Assessment Work: Evaluating Great-power Competition'
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2024) 'Strategic Assessment and Grand Strategy'
- Mallet, Ellis; Kitchen, Nicholas (2023) 'Neoclassical realism, policy paradigms and strategic change'
- Panos Vasileiadis (2022) ‘A Positional Theory of Grand Strategy Under Decline'
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2021), 'Frameworks for Undertaking Strategic Net Assessment', UK OFFICIAL. Prepared for the UK Ministry of Defence supported by the Defence and Security Accelerator.
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2021), 'Conceptual Foundations of Strategic Net Assessment', UK OFFICIAL. Prepared for the UK Ministry of Defence, supported by the Defence and Security Accelerator.
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2020) 'Why American grand strategy has changed: international constraint, generational shift, and the return of realism.'
- Kitchen, Nicholas; Cox, Michael (2019) 'Power, Structural Power, and American Decline.'
- Kitchen, Nicholas; Quinn, Adam (2018) 'Understanding American Power: Conceptual clarity, strategic priorities and the decline debate.'
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2014) 'Hegemonic transition theory and US foreign policy'
- Kitchen, Nicholas (2013) 'Structural shifts and strategic change: from the War on Terror to the Pivot to Asia'.
Project Director
Dr Nicholas Kitchen
Associate Professor in International Relations; Executive Director, Centre for the Study of Global Power Competition (CGPC)
Biography
I joined Surrey in 2018 from the London School of Economics, where I had been Assistant Professorial Research Fellow and Head of Analysis at LSE IDEAS. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS, and Treasurer of the US Foreign Policy Working Group of the British International Studies Association.