10:30am - 6pm

Thursday 7 July 2022

Workshop: (Re-)Theorising Great Power Competition

University of Surrey
Guildford
Surrey
GU2 7XH
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European Workshops in International Studies, July 2022

The workshop brought together International Relations scholars to interrogate how we should think about great power competition (GPC) theoretically. What exactly does it mean to invoke GPC as a descriptive, structural, or normative claim? If great power competition went away, why has it returned, and to what purpose? How does the form, object, or mode of competition change over time, as technologies, norms, and the rules of international order evolve? Perhaps most fundamentally, given the history of great powers, how might GPC end?

Session 1: (Re-)Theorising Great Power Competition

The Banality of Great-Power Competition

Daniel Nexon (Georgetown)
Power Analysis and the new Global Power Competition

Nick Kitchen (Surrey)
Chair: Revecca Pedi (Macedonia)

Session 2: Material Perspectives

Grand Strategic Behaviour Under Decline: A Power-centric Theory of Strategic Adjustment

Panagiotis Vasileiadis (Surrey)
A Granular Theory of Balancing

Steven Lobell (Utah)
Strategic Minerals and Great Power Rivalry

Rob Konkel (Princeton)
Chair: Matteo Dian (Bologna)

Session 3: Ideational Perspectives

Status, ideology, and world-historical direction

Adam Quinn (Birmingham)
Ideological security dilemma: An Institutional Perspective

Eun A Jo and Jessica Chen Weiss (Cornell) 
Understanding the EU's strategy in the Indo-Pacific: signalling strategic autonomy in the epicentre of great power competition?

Nils Willigen and Nicolas Blarel (Leiden) 
Chair: Leslie Wehner (Bath)

Session 4: Regional Perspectives

Power Management in a Multiregional World: Regional Power-Great Power Competition and Quest for Leadership

Leslie Wehner (Bath)
Great power competition, legitimacy and order in the Indo-Pacific

Matteo Dian (Bologna)
Understanding the EU's Indo-Pacific in the Indo-Pacific: signalling strategic autonomy in the epicentre of great power competition?

Nicholas Blarel and Niels van Willigen (Leiden)
Chair: Adam Quinn (Birmingham)

Session 5: Secondary State Perspectives

Maintaining Equilibrium Theory: Explaining Secondary States Strategy under Great Power Competition

Mateusz Ambrożek (Warsaw)
The Unintended Consequences of Great Power Competition Then and Now: A Small State Perspective, Lessons from Greece

Revecca Pedi (Macedonia)
Chair: Steven Lobell (Utah)

Session 6: Plenary Reflections

Directions for Future Research
Chair: Nick Kitchen (Surrey)