Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-nlwjb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-07T13:41:54.703Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Protean power: a second look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Peter J. Katzenstein
Peter J. Katzenstein*
Affiliation:
Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: pjk2@cornell.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper restates the central point of Protean Power, pushes the analysis forward by engaging each of the commentators, and concludes by underlining the importance of uncertainty and potentialities and mapping some of the areas that need further attention.

Keywords

control powerprotean poweruncertaintypotentiality

Information

Type
Symposium: Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics: Edited by Jacques E. C. Hymans
Information
International Theory , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2020 , pp. 481 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adler, Emanuel. 2019. World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2020. “Control Power as a Special Case of Protean Power: Thoughts on Peter Katzenstein and Lucia Seybert's Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics.” International Theory 12 (3): 422–434.Google Scholar
Ayoub, Phillip M. 2018. “Protean Power in Movement: Navigating Uncertainty in the LGBT Rights Revolution.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 79–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckley, Michael. 2018a. “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters.” International Security 43 (2): 7–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckley, Michael. 2018b. Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cancian, Mark F. 2018. Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts. Washington, DC: CSIS International Security Program.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy. 1999. The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeMartino, George, and Grabel, Ilene. 2020. “Irreparable Ignorance, Protean Power and Economics.” International Theory 12 (3): 435–448.Google Scholar
Doran, Charles. 1991. Systems in Crisis: New Imperatives of High Politics at Century's End. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doran, Charles. 1999. “Why Forecasts Fail: The Limits and Potential of Forecasting in International Relations and Economics.” International Studies Review 1 (2): 11–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doran, Charles. 2003. “Economics, Philosophy of History, and the ‘Single Dynamic’ of Power Cycle Theory: Expectations, Competition, and Statecraft.” International Political Science Review 24 (1): 13–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelstein, David M. 2017. Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Feynman, Richard P. 1985. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Forst, Rainer. 2015a. Normativität und Macht. Zur Analyse sozialer Rechtfertigungsordnungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Forst, Rainer. 2015b. “Noumenal Power.” Journal of Political Philosophy 23 (2): 111–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Jeffrey A. 2019. War and Chance: Assessing Uncertainty in International Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Jeffrey A., Baker, Joshua D., Mellers, Barbara A., Tetlock, Philip E., and Zeckhauser, Richard. 2018. “The Value of Precision in Probability Assessment: Evidence from a Large–Scale Geopolitical Forecasting Tournament.” International Studies Quarterly 62 (2): 410–22.Google Scholar
Gallarotti, Giulio M. 2009. The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Grabel, Ilene. 2017. When Things Don't Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Guzzini, Stefano. 2020. “Protean Power as a Plea for an Open Social Ontology, Non-Efficient Causal Explanations and Cautious Political Practice.” International Theory 12 (3): 449–458.Google Scholar
Hall, Rodney Bruce. 2018. “Deontic Power, Authority, and Governance in International Politics.” International Relations 32 (2): 173–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harford, Tim. 2018. “I Can Make One Confident Prediction: My Forecast will Fail.” Financial Times, June 1. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/a94e28ec-6409-11e8-a39d-4df188287fff. Accessed 19 April 2019.Google Scholar
Harrington, Cameron. 2016. “The Ends of the World: International Relations and the Anthropocene.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44 (3): 478–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimans, Jeremy, and Timms, Henry. 2018. New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – and How To Make It Work for You. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Hogarth, Robin M., Lejarraga, Tomás, and Soyer, Emre. 2015. “The Two Settings of Kind and Wicked Learning Environments.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 24 (5): 379–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymans, Jacques E.C. 2020. “Introduction to the Symposium. The Concept of Protean Power: Change We Can Believe In?” International Theory 12 (3): 410–421.Google Scholar
Jones, Erik. 2009. “Elusive Power, Essential Leadership.” Survival 51 (3): 243–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Nelson, Stephen C.. 2013a. “Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Times.” In Politics in the New Hard Times: The Great Recession in Comparative Perspective, edited by Kahler, Miles and Lake, David, 233–52. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Nelson, Stephen C.. 2013b. “Reading the Right Signals and Reading the Signals Right: IPE and the Financial Crisis of 2008.” Review of International Political Economy 20 (5): 1101–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Seybert, Lucia A.. 2018a. Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Seybert, Lucia A.. 2018b. “Protean Power and Uncertainty: Exploring the Unexpected in World Politics.” International Studies Quarterly 62 (1): 80–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kavalski, Emilian. 2012. “Waking IR Up from its ‘Deep Newtonian Slumber’.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (1): 137–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirshner, Jonathan D. 2015. “The Economic Sins of Modern IR Theory and Its Classical Realist Alternative.” World Politics 67 (1): 155–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 1995. “The Inevitability of Future Revolutionary Surprises.” The American Journal of Sociology 100 (6): 1528–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2014. “Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene.” New Literary History 45: 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markell, Patchen. 2014. “The Moment Has Passed: Power after Arendt.” In Radical Future Pasts: Untimely Political Theory, edited by Coles, Roman, Reinhardt, Mark, and Shulman, George, 113–43. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
McCall, Storrs. 2001. “The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Objective Probabilities.” Foundations of Physics Letters 14 (1): 95–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, John R. 2000. Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Mermin, N. David. 1990. Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mermin, N. David. 1998. “The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.” Pramana 51: 549–65. http://www.arXiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1989. More Heat than Light. Economics as Social Physics: Physics as Nature's Economics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1946. Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Stephen, and Shin, Hyun Song. 2001. “Global Games: Theory and Application.” Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1275R. Yale University, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics.Google Scholar
Musil, Robert. 1953. The Man Without Qualities. Translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc.Google Scholar
National Endowment for Democracy. 2017. Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence. Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for Democracy.Google Scholar
Nelson, Stephen C., and Katzenstein, Peter J.. 2014. “Uncertainty and Risk and the Crisis of 2008.” International Organization 48 (2): 361–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noonan, Peggy. 2019. “The Missing Order in American Politics.” The Wall Street Journal, May 11:A13.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, Guillermo, and Schmitter, Philippe C.. 1986. Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Pelopidas, Benoît. 2020. “Protean Power at the End of the World(s).” International Theory 12 (3): 459–470.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1995. A World of Propensities. Bristol: Thoemmes Press.Google Scholar
Rovelli, Carlo. 2016. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Rovelli, Carlo. 2017. Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Santa-Cruz, Arturo. 2019. U.S. Hegemony and the Americas: Power and Economic Statecraft in International Relations. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, John, ed. 1994. Power: Critical Concepts. Vol. 1. Critical Concepts in Sociology. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Seybert, Lucia A., Nelson, Stephen C., and Katzenstein, Peter J.. 2018. “Slumdog versus Superman: Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Circulation of Power in the Global Film Industry.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 209–25. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, Ian and Bedi, Sonu, eds. 2007. Political Contingency: Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental, and the Unforeseen. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Sil, Rudra, and Katzenstein, Peter J.. 2010. Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2010. The Black Swan. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 2018. “Mann, War, and Cyberspace: Dualities of Infrastructural Power in America.” Theory and Society 47 (1): 61–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tetlock, Philip, and Gardner, Dan. 2015. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo. 2004. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library.Google Scholar
Underdal, Arild. 2017. “Climate Change and International Relations (After Kyoto).” Annual Review of Political Science 20: 169–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Christopher. 2018. “What is ‘Sharp Power’?” Journal of Democracy 29 (3): 9–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolchover, Natalie. 2018. “Machine Learning's ‘Amazing’ Ability to Predict Chaos.” Quanta Magazine, April 18. Available at:. https://www.quantamagazine.org/machine-learnings-amazing-ability-to-predict-chaos-20180418/. Accessed 21 April 2019.Google Scholar
Zürn, Michael. 2020. “Unknown Effects of Social Innovations.” International Theory 12 (3): 471–480.Google Scholar