Where?
Fakultätssitzungssaal, University of Innsbruck, SoWi building, 3rd floor east, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck (A)
When?
Wednesday, November 8th, 2023
5:30-7:00 pm CET
Grand strategy is a thriving field. Yet the foundational assumptions of most contemporary scholarship are both theoretically and empirically limiting. As currently constituted, work on grand strategy focuses on the United States and a few other great powers. Scholars debate definitions and offer prescriptions. They alternatively treat grand strategies as architectures or subject to constant revision; they largely favor a systemic approach that focuses on structural factors as determinative, understating the significance of domestic politics; and they consistently fail to appreciate the essentially relational character of any grand strategy. Fundamentally, the field lacks a framework for the systematic study of grand strategy. We modestly attempt to begin to address this problem. The presentation has two interrelated components. First, we identify a new, contrasting set of assumptions. Second, we employ them to construct a framework that will potentially allow scholars to systematically, relationally study national grand strategies. Initiating work on such a framework, we argue, may subsequently help develop an understanding of underlying causative relations, expand the universe of cases, acknowledge the relational and interactive character of grand strategies.