Social Theory: Susan Strange

2nd Dec 2022 by Simon Mabon

SUSAN STRANGE

By Sukru Cildir. 

Susan Strange was born in Dorset in 1923 and passed away in 1998. A founding figure of International Political Economy in the UK, Strange received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the LSE in 1943.  Following her graduation, she worked in journalism for around 20 years, initially at The Economist, before spells at The Observer, in the White House, and at the UN. Strange later held a range of academic posts in the UK, Italy and Japan, including Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at LSE in 1978-1988(Brown, 1999, pp. 531–535).

There is little doubt that her years in journalism were absolutely important to shape Strange’s world view and academic positionality. However, it was the years of 1965-76 when she was a researcher at Chatham House where key works Sterling and British Policy and International Monetary Relations were published. For her, there was a void between economics and politics. Accordingly, neither Economics nor International Relations (IR) had sufficient research agenda to understand the contemporary international political economy. While traditional economists did not consider the reality of power and instead focused on abstract theories of Economics, IR scholars couldn’t go beyond of state and military power (Tooze, 2000, p.284). There was a need of a more plausible and integrated approach to understand international economic relations that experienced fundamental changes in the contemporary period. This approach would constitute a middle ground between political and economic analyses and conclude ‘a dialogue of the deaf’ between them (Cohen, 2007, p.208). This concern is particularly evident across her most influential articles (Strange, 1970) and became the core of other writings on international relations.

As an experienced journalist and a latecomer to academia, she was against convoluted theoretical debates and committed herself to “making academic writings accessible and free from jargon” (Tooze and May, 2000, p. 4).  She preferred simplicity and efficient expression in order to reach a wider audience. This was not merely a preference or an individual style for her, but the social responsibility of an academic to communicate with and share their knowledge with as many people as possible (Ibid).

Although it is possible to portray her as an empiricist, this is misguided and hides and interest in theoretically informed empirical research (Palan, 1999, p.123). She opposed law-like generalisations and didn’t like ‘grand theory’, but insisted on ‘grounding theory’, “most importantly in a detailed knowledge of particular sectors of international political economy” (Tooze and May, 2002, p. 2). 

Key arguments 

Although Strange is largely regarded as a scholar in IPE, her analyses are also quite helpful for understanding global politics. In that sense, the question of who benefits (cui bono?) which features prominently in her work helps us to understand the nature of international system, and whose benefits are mostly served by the existing rules, norms and regimes in global politics. To understand who benefits, we actually look at “where power lies and how this influences outcomes” (May, 1996, p.173). For her, there are two types of power: relational power and structural power. Whilst relational power refers to the physical and material capabilities that can be measured and estimated, structural power refers to “shape and determine the structures of the global political economy [or international system][1] within which other states, their political institutions, and their economic enterprises and (not least) their scientists and other professional people have to operate” (Strange, 1988, p.24).  Structural power provides a framework for the actors of the international system to regulate their relations and understand when, why, how and by whom the key decisions regarding international order are taken. 

For Strange, structural power emerges across a quadrangle of linkages among four major global structures, namely:  production, security, finance and knowledge. She resembles them to four columns of a pyramid and notes that there is a quadrangle linkage among those four structures. Strange emphasizes that none of the structures is more important than the others and they have differing weights over the structural power of an actor (May, 1996, p.178). She also adds that there is a very close relations between structural power and relational power. Accordingly, structural power forms the four major global structures in a way in which material relations are influenced and regulated to the advantage of an actor who bears the structural power. In return, the emerging material advantage fortifies its structural power (May, 1996). So, structural power means more than relational power and actually corresponds to an ability of an actor to shape the international arena by determining the rules of the game, setting up agenda of possibilities and deciding what should be possible/plausible for other actors as well as its growing dominance at relational power components (Strange, 1988; May, 1996; Tooze and May, 2002).

Strange’s purpose here was to bring an analysis of power to international economics, applied to highlight the extent of US in the process (May, 1996, p.178).  In production structure, the US has been the preeminent actor in the world with its largest GDP, leading companies in oil, computing, aviation industries and its ability of what shall be produced, by whom, under what conditions and how. In security structure, it has been the leading state which provides ‘safety of realm’ for the global order with its unprecedented military forces “on land, at sea, in the air and (most markedly) in space” (Strange, 1987, p.566). In finance, the US has been the dominant actor with its global reserve currency (the US Dollar), its influence on credit creation, global financial transactions, especially through SWIFT. In knowledge,  the US is the principle country in the world with its largest share in global research and development, its influence and control over what is believed, what is known, and their communication systems along with its global agenda setting power (Strange, 1988).

In application 

The concepts and approaches developed by Susan Strange provide useful tools to explain and understand the (international) politics in the Middle East. Her approach to international political economy helps us to understand the main characteristics of the international system in which Middle Eastern actors to operate. In my PhD study, I applied her structural power concept to explain how the US structural power shaped the international context where Saudi Arabia and Iran used oil in their bilateral relations between 1990 and 2020 along with Historical Sociology (Cildir, 2021).

Additionally, there are a number of other studies that use similar approaches to Strange, without necessarily using her ideas of structural power. For instance, Simon Bromley’s seminal text on American hegemony and world oil and argued that the US had the directive role in international oil industry and its power depends on the stability in the Gulf (Bromley, 1991). Similarly, Doug Stokes and Sam Raphael examined the relations between the US military dominance in oil rich areas including Middle East and its enduring global power (Stokes and Raphael, 2010). However, M. Fatih Tayfur directly applied Strange’s IPE approach to analyse Turkish-Greek relations in the Eastern Mediterranean to have an alternative explanation of the relations (Tayfur, 2003).  

As long as oil is the most popular energy resource around the world with its largest share (over 30% since the mid-1960s) in global energy consumption and the Middle East plays a crucial role in global oil politics with its abundant oil reserves, Susan Strange’s theory of structural power can be an insightful theoretical framework for future studies concerning the international relations and political economy in the Middle East.  As states as being the most important actors in international relations locate at the crossroads between domestic and international politics and undertake their decisions by omni-balancing between internal and external pressures, international context should not be ignored in analyses concerning political economy, politics and international relations (Saouli, 2012, p.5; Nonneman, 2003).

References 

Bromley, Simon (1991), American Hegemony and World Oil: The Industry, the State System, and the World Economy, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.

Brown, Chris (1999), “Susan Strange- A Critical Appretiation”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 25, pp. 531–535.

Cildir, Sukru (2021), Oil in Saudi-Iranian Relations under the US Hegemony: 1990-2020, PhD Thesis, Lancaster University. 

Cohen, Benjamin J. (2007), “The Transatlantic Divide: Why are American and British IPE so different?”, Review of International Political Economy, Vol.14, No.2, pp.197-219, p. 208

May, Christopher (1996), “Strange fruit: Susan Strange's theory of structural power in the international political economy”, Global Society, Vol.10, No. 2, pp. 167-189. 

Nonneman, Gerd (2003), “Analysing the Foreign Policies of the Middle East and North Africa: A Conceptual Framework”, The Review of International Affairs, Vol.3, No.2, pp. 118-130. 

Palan, Ronen (1999), “Susan Strange 1923-1998: A Great International Relations Theorist”, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 121–132. 

Saouli, Adham (2012), The Arab state: Dilemmas of late formation, Oxon: Routledge.

Stokes, Doug and Raphael, Sam (2010), Global Energy and American Hegemony, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Strange, Susan (1970), “International Economics and International Relations: A Case of Mutual Neglect”, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 304-315.

Strange, Susan (1971), Sterling and British Policy: A Political Study of an International Currency in Decline,  Oxford University Press. 

Strange, Susan (1976), International Monetary Relations (International economic relations of the western world, 1959-1971), Oxford University Press.

Strange, Susan (1987), “The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony”, International Organizations, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 551-574. 

Strange, Susan (1988), States and Markets, London: Pinter Publishers. 

Tayfur, M. Fatih (2003), “Strange Goes to Eastern Mediterranean”, Perception, Vol.8, No.2, pp. 1-24.

Tooze, Roger (2000), “Susan Strange, Academic International Relations and the Study of International Political Economy”, New Political Economy, Vol.5, No.2, pp. 280-289. 

Tooze, Roger and May, Christopher (2002), Authority and Markets: Susan Strange’s Writings on International Political Economy, Palgrave Macmillian. 

[1] I added ‘the international system’.