Making Geoeconomics an IR Research Program

Abstract

AbstractIn contrast to growing public attention to geoeconomics as the new mode of conducting great power competition, the IR discipline has not actively engaged in conceptual and theoretical analysis from the geoeconomic viewpoint. This article examines issues that geoeconomics needs to solve to become a new theoretical framework in the positivist “American” IR scholarship that dominates research on great power competition. On the one hand, the concept of geoeconomics needs to be redefined and account for a phenomenon that is not already covered in extant IR scholarship. Thus, geoeconomics should be considered as a form of grand strategy and defined as the use of economic instruments to advance mid- to long-term strategic interests in a geographical region of the world. On the other hand, geoeconomics in positivist IR should take into account international economic structure and domestic politics in developing a parsimonious explanation for the conditions to employ geoeconomic grand strategy. In this process, the theorist needs to make an analytical choice to concentrate on certain factors and mechanisms to assure theoretical parsimony. This article concludes that addressing the issues of conceptual clarity and parsimonious theorization would potentially allow geoeconomics to become a new research program in positivist IR.