Winecoff, William Kindred (2020)

952876
research-article2020
EJT0010.1177/1354066120952876European Journal of International RelationsWinecoff
25th Anniversary Special Issue

EJIR
European Journal of
“The persistent myth of

International Relations
2020, Vol. 26(S1) 209–252
© The Author(s) 2020
lost hegemony,” revisited: Article reuse guidelines:
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structural power as a complex DOI: 10.1177/1354066120952876
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120952876
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
network phenomenon
William Kindred Winecoff

Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Abstract
This article resuscitates the idea of structural power in world politics by linking it to
modern complex network science, presents a theoretical framework for understanding
how global structures develop and change, and empirically analyzes the prominence
of leading states within global finance, trade, security, and knowledge networks. It
argues that the “fitness plus preferential attachment” (FPA) model of complex network
evolution provides a logical explanation for the durability of American influence even
as some of its advantages in country-level capabilities has eroded, and it introduces
a network methodology that is capable of empirically analyzing the organizational
complexity that exists within and across domains in world politics. It argues that the
rise of China and other emerging powers has been overstated in some ways, but that
a redistribution of structural prominence is taking place, in some domains, as emerging
markets increase their transnational connections; this has mostly come at the relative
expense of Europe, however, rather than the United States.
Keywords
hegemony, global networks, structure, power, political economy, hegemonic stability
theory
What makes some countries more powerful than others? This is the most important question for
the study and practice of international relations (Beckley, 2018a: 7).
This article resuscitates the concept of structural power in world politics by linking it
to prominence within global network structures and examines a range of these networks
Corresponding author:
William Kindred Winecoff, Indiana University Bloomington, 1100 E 7th St, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Email: wkwineco@indiana.edu
210 European Journal of International Relations 26(S1)
to uncover the structural positions of states and national industries. In so doing, the arti-
cle offers a theory of the formation and persistence of structural power and examines it
with a methodology developed in complex network science, neither of which were pre-
sent in Susan Strange’s original formulation of the structural power concept in
International Relations (IR).
Specifically, I examine whether the “fitness plus preferential attachment” complex
network model describes several domains of world politics—following Strange, I exam-
ine the financial, trade, security, and knowledge systems—and provide descriptive
empirical analysis that is consistent with the model, and discuss how further inferential
and multiplex analysis might proceed from this foundation. The overall picture that
emerges is that the United States remains overwhelmingly structurally prominent across
domains in world politics. While there is important variance across both domains and
time, the extent to which American centrality endures is surprising. The rise of China
(and some other emerging markets) is also noticeable, particularly in the production
subsystem, but in relative terms, their growth has not come at the expense of the United
States. Instead, they are catching up to, and in some ways have already surpassed, other
members of the Old Core, especially Europe and advanced East Asia. The broad conclu-
sion is that what was true in Strange’s day remains true today, despite the persistent myth
of lost hegemony: the United States retains core structural positions across domains in
world politics. But indefinite persistence is not guaranteed, and I also articulate the
mechanisms through which a structural transformation can take place.
As such, this paper should be viewed as another step in the turn toward “new interde-
pendence” scholarship that is already underway in International Political Economy (IPE)
and International Relations (Farrell and Newman, 2014, 2019; Oatley, 2019; Oatley
et al., 2013; Winecoff, 2015). It contributes to this special issue’s theme of
Interdisciplinarity and the IR Innovation Horizon by recasting legacy discussions from
IPE and IR in light of modern systems, complexity, and network sciences, which enriches
previous conceptualizations of structural power and complex interdependence while also
providing an empirical strategy for evaluating competing claims about them.
Structural power and world politics

Shortly after leaving her post as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department,
Anne-Marie Slaughter argued that the United States’ influence in the world is determined
by its position within global network structures (Slaughter, 2012: 45 (emphasis added)):
For the next decade, the United States should pursue of a grand strategy of network centrality.
The most important shift for America is not the rise of China and the realignment of power in
the international system, but rather the ubiquity and density of global networks. Existing grand
strategies—such as primacy, containment, offshore balancing, isolationism, selective
engagement and order building—assume a world of states acting essentially as unitary actors
with defined military, economic, and diplomatic strategies. . . . However, even if [states] are
the principal actors in the international system, they now act side by side with many types of
social actors who are able to come together and act independently on the world stage. The
Winecoff 211
resulting [network] system is messy, complex, and frustrating. Yet wishing for a simpler world
will not make it so.
Slaughter’s claim relies on intuition that is common to International Relations theory

(even if sometimes disputed): the world is comprised of sets of interdependent social,
political, and economic relationships that together form a common structure, so being at
the core of that structure is likely to confer substantial benefit. Thus, states interested in
maximizing their influence in world politics should conduct foreign policy in such a way
as to enhance the likelihood of increased “centrality,” or prominence, within these sys-
tems. According to this view, focusing too intently on dyadic competition and relative
capabilities—at the expense of broader structural considerations—can miss key determi-
nants of outcomes in world politics.
This observation from a leading policymaker recalls a previous era in which the
importance of structural position in world affairs was a topic of serious discussion by
International Relations scholars. In the mid-1980s many theorists of international poli-
tics had predicted the decline of American hegemony and the emergence of a multipolar
world where relative capability gaps were narrow.1 In response, Susan Strange argued
that power in world politics does not follow from national attributes alone—which she
called the “power base” that conferred what she called “relational power” capabilities of
compellence and deterrence—but that the distribution of power is determined largely by
countries’ positions within global structures (Strange, 1987: 553):
In this new great game of states, structural power decides outcomes (both positive and negative)
much more than relational power does, and the United States’ structural power has, on balance,
increased.2
In four key areas—security, goods production, finance and credit, and knowledge—
Strange argued that American prominence remained undiminished despite the intellec-
tual attention given to what she called “the persistent myth of lost hegemony.” Strange
made her argument by general description. Her unwillingness to develop broad theory
and a tractable methodology that linked structures to outcomes limited the influence of
her approach (Milner and Snyder, 1988; Strange, 1988b), at least in the American acad-
emy that was undergoing a sharp turn toward a “hard science” approach that privileged
inferential statistical methodologies to analyze implications from reduced-form bargain-
ing models that explicitly eschewed structural analysis (Amadae, 2003; Cranmer and
Desmarais, 2016; Lake, 2009b; Lake and Powell, 1999; Oatley, 2011; Winecoff, 2017b).3
But the events of the succeeding years—in particular the end of the Cold War and
initiation of the “unipolar moment,” as well as the near-universal integration into
American-led institutions and spread of liberal norms—indicate that Strange’s intuition
contained much value. Outside of the United States, especially in the “British School”
of IPE, Strange’s framework had much more influence (Cohen, 2008). Yet even there
the development of a general theory of structural power, and a tractable methodology to
measure and analyze it, was never fully developed.4 Methodologically, Strange argued
that quantitative indicators may be used for uncovering a state’s power base, but that
structural power as control over outcomes “can only be inferred from historical
evidence” (Strange, 1987: 554). As a result, the utility of Strange’s approach in the
broader IR and IPE communities has been limited. For example, one of the most influ-
ential pieces of modern conceptual scholarship on power in international politics men-
tions her work only in passing, as offering a non-Marxian approach to structural power
that contrasts with the neo-Gramscians, world-systems theorists, and world polity con-
structivists discussed at some length (Barnett and Duvall, 2005).
One-third of a century later scholars and policymakers are once again preoccupied
with a debate over American hegemonic decline, inspired by the Global Financial Crisis
and the rise of regional powers on every continent. Once again, this is often taken as a
premise: how could the American power advantage not subside, at least in relative terms,
given rapid growth in emerging markets—especially China—in combination with the
natural advantages those countries enjoy, and perceived weakness in the Old Core?5 It
seems likely that these and related questions will preoccupy International Relations
scholars in the coming years.6 While others maintain that substantial evidence of
American primacy remains (Beckley, 2018b; Brooks and Wohlforth, 2016; Norrlof,
2010; Oatley, 2017), these arguments are frequently constructed by comparison of
national attributes such as economic mass, population size, military expenditure, energy
production, or other country-level characteristics. Thus, the implied model of power that
often predicts relative American decline is frequently relational, linear, and monotonic:
when one country’s attribute rises relative to another’s, there is an observed shift in the
distribution of power. Which of these factors matter most, and in what ways, comprises
the scope of the debate.
Yet Strange’s intuition that states occupy structural positions that may also confer
power and influence remains valuable. If states pursue network centrality in addition to
attributional superiority, as Slaughter recommends, then this is surely to enhance their
structural power over outcomes.
Structural power and complex networks

There are reasons to think that an attribute- or capability-based approach to understand-
ing power in world politics is too reductive, for two reasons. First, the empirical question
has been only vaguely identified: how much of a relative advantage is needed to confer
compellence or deterrence capabilities (Drezner, 2009)? Which attributes are the most
important, and in what combination? While some recent research in this genre has tried
to move beyond reference to simple gross national aggregates like GDP, industrial pro-
duction, military expenditure, and population size, they still often assume that the power
distribution follows straightforwardly from the distribution of attributes.7
Second, in many domains the distribution of power and influence does not appear to
follow linearly from the distribution of monadic (or even dyadic) attributes. For exam-
ple, the ongoing importance of the United States’ structural position, despite some ero-
sion of the relative superiority of its relative capabilities (such as economic size), has
been illustrated by recent events: the spread of American subprime crisis to the whole of
the world economy, and the Federal Reserve’s global liquidity provision as the crisis rip-
pled through the global financial system, which has only expanded during the Covid-19
crisis that is underway as I type these words (Winecoff, 2016); the use of American
Winecoff 213
basing networks during the Libya intervention; the negotiations over trade deals such as
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (in which the United States pursued geopolitical goals
rather than maximizing economic benefit); the controversy over the US Congress’
unwillingness to recalculate vote shares in the International Monetary Fund; the use of
financial market prominence to seize illicit finance and sanction geopolitical foes; and
the development of a significant international counterterrorism network that allows the
United States to deploy unmanned drones against specific security risks. These are but a
few examples. Having sufficient capabilities to act was a prerequisite for the United
States to express influence over these events and outcomes, but these capabilities are not
separable from the structural context in which they exist. In fact, the capabilities may in
part exist because of the United States’ structural embeddedness in world politics, while
also reinforcing that position in a co-evolving process.
The usage of network theory and analytics in International Relations has been grow-
ing in recent years. A full review of the research using network theory, method, or meta-
phor is beyond the scope of this paper, but some prominent examples—other than those
cited elsewhere in this paper—include Goddard (2009, 2018) on brokerage roles and the
revisionist potential of rising powers, Carpenter (2011) on agenda-setting, Nexon (2009)
on international continuity and change as network processes, Cooley and Nexon (2013)
on network structures and the qualitative nature of orders, Duque (2018) on international
status and recognition, Kinne (2013, 2018) and Kinne and Bunte (2020) on defense
cooperation agreements, and various other examinations of the network of structure and
conflict (Cranmer and Desmarais, 2011, 2016; Cranmer et al., 2012a,b 2013, 2015;
Maoz, 2010, 2012a,b).
It is a standard finding in network analysis that well-connected nodes, i.e. those that
have high “centrality” in the network, possess influence over the system of which they
are at the core. Thus, network prominence should be associated with structural power
and the distribution of network prominence with the distribution of structural power.8
Prominent nodes may control access to resources or information. They may provide
bridges that connect otherwise-isolated parts of the network, which gives them gatekeep-
ing power. They may also possess agenda-setting power on the world stage, if only
through the ability to veto. Internal developments within core nodes may be sufficient for
stabilizing (or destabilizing) other parts of the network. For example, a financial crisis
that strikes Argentina is highly likely to remain localized, but a financial crisis that strikes
the United States will spread throughout the global financial system, because the
American financial system is more connected to the rest of the network than the Argentine
financial system (Oatley et al., 2013). This is a function of the distribution of connections
in the global financial network, which has the American financial sector at its core and
the Argentinian financial sector in its periphery. Intuitively this is what is meant by the
aphorism “if the United States sneezes the world catches a cold.”
High centrality gives countries at the core of the system a great deal of influence,
and a large amount of control, over essential outcomes in the system. While the occu-
pants of core network positions may be able to use their position to compel or deter
others in some circumstances, this form of power is much broader and (sometimes)
much more subtle. It is often indicated by what is not observed, rather than what is: a
highly prominent node may face fewer challenges than less-prominent nodes. A state
that possesses high centrality in the security system may face few direct challenges,
even from rivals with fitness of similar quality but lower structural importance. Thus,
the distribution of ties in the network may prevent conflicts that would have been
observed under a different distribution of ties, even if the underlying country charac-
teristics were the same in both scenarios. A high-prominence country may also be less
prone to economic instability than low-prominence countries. It may find its language
being more commonly used around the world. It may find security partnerships easier
to obtain. It may always be able to attract investment when it seeks capital. It may be
a target destination for the world’s highly skilled labor, and thus a perpetual leader in
innovation. All of these are outcomes that many states pursue. If it is easier to generate
these outcomes from a more central network position, then that is a source of power
due to structural position above and beyond the attributes of a state’s power base.
Yet much less work has overtly drawn from complex network science to examine
outcomes in the international system, and the ways in which those dynamic processes
confer power to some while constraining others, according to the positions within the
structure that they occupy. Complex network science provides opportunities for under-
standing the evolution of such structures. In modern network science, “complexity” and
“network” are not mere buzzwords or metaphors, but defined categories of meaning. A
network is a system composed of units (“nodes”) that are connected through ideational,
material, or social “ties,” such that a state of interdependence exists within the system of
which they are a part.9 A complex network contains a meaningful topology—i.e., a distri-
bution of linkages in the network, such that some units are more connected than others—
that endogenously impacts the performance of the network over time.10 Often these
processes resemble mechanisms common to IR scholarship, such as positive feedback or
path dependence, but are statistically calculable. Thus, a complex network is a system,
where “system” does not signify the international “level” of analysis—as in the “images”
of IR theory—but “a large number of parts that interact in a nonsimple way” such that
“the whole is more than the sum of the parts” (Simon, 1962: 468).11 Because the system
is not just the sum of its parts, it should be studied holistically—not just the units but also
the connections between them—and modern network science provides an advanced con-
ceptual, analytical, and methodological toolkit for doing so.
In complex networks, the topological structure of the network has an impact on the
performance of the network over time. In other words, complex networks often contain
pure endogenous processes, such that the distribution of links in the network (i.e., its
topology), over time, is related to the distribution of links in prior iterations of the net-
work. These endogenous processes may interact with the characteristics and behaviors of
the nodes in the network, as discussed below, but those characteristics and behaviors on
their own cannot explain how the network formed and changed as time progressed.
When an outcome within the network is interdependent, then the topology of the network
is information that is needed to accurately explain that outcome. Complex networks are
particularly likely to form “hubs”—nodes that attract many connections and are thus
globally important—and “communities”—groupings of nodes that are densely con-
nected internally, but much less connected externally. These hubs and communities are
often reinforced as networks develop over time, and so structurally prominent nodes
often retain their structural prominence as partial function of their prior prominence. As
Winecoff 215
networks become more complex, with denser connections through hubs and thicker
communities, the structural features of the network become more important for explain-
ing outcomes within the network.
An illustration might help to illustrate the logic. Suppose we wish to model economic
growth as a function of a national economy’s international trade. The global economy is
deeply interdependent: economies are embedded within a dense forest of transnational
relations—economic, political, institutional, social, historical—that have an impact on
trade, and on a fundamental level trade is the product of economic competition (an inter-
dependent process). Faced with this, we have two choices. The first is to simply ignore
this organizational complexity and model economic growth as a linear function of total
trade (or trade as a proportion of GDP), perhaps “controlling” for other domestic varia-
bles (e.g., political institutions, factor endowments) that could be related to trade, in an
additive fashion. Let us call those other factors “Domestic Inputs.” Then we have a
model like this:
GDPgrowth = Trade+ DomesticInputs. (1)
This approach assumes that the total amount of trade is the only way that trade
impacts the economy, such that each €1 increase in trade has the same effect on growth
(on average). But perhaps it does not. Perhaps €1 of trade with one partner is worth
more economic growth than €1 of trade with a different partner, maybe because it
employs a new industry. Perhaps having €1 of trade with each of five different partners
has a different impact on growth than €5 with a single partner. These are plausible fac-
tors that could mediate the relationship between trade and growth and could occur for a
variety of reasons related to factor endowments, economic complexity, or dependency.
To account for this, we could keep adding complications to the basic GDP growth =
Trade + DomesticInputs model, but we will never capture all of these interdependen-
cies simultaneously.
The second approach is to take that interdependence seriously, and model growth as a
function of trade that is itself conditional on where within the structure of the global trade
a national economy resides: does it have many trading partners, or a few? Is trade rela-
tively equal across its partners, or highly varied? Do those partners have many other
trading partners, or a small number? Does the fact that i trades with j, and j trades with k,
provide growth opportunities for i through its indirect connection to k that would other-
wise not exist, because of the potential for technology transfer, resource access, or some
other interdependency? Does a newly trading country m seek to first connect to j, given
that j could provide indirect access to the markets, resources, and technology in i and k?
If so, does the fact that j now has many trade partners—i.e., it is an emerging hub in this
trading network—send a signal to i of the potential economic value of trade with j, thus
causing i to pursue greater trade with j than with k or m? And does this central position
not confer substantial power to j relative to i or k or m, both in terms of its access to the
markets of the other three and also the politics over the terms of trade between them,
which cannot be understood by simply adding up the GDP of all three countries and
treating that as the power distribution? Aggregate GDP is certainly still part of a
country’s “power base,” and that could certainly impact the desirability of a country as a
trading partner, but its effect is likely to be conditional on the positions of the countries
within the broader network structure. In a similar way, a rapidly growing country that is
relatively poorly connected may have less power—the ability to shape markets, and to
negotiate with a strong hand—than a more slowly growing economy that has long been
deeply embedded at the core of the system, even if they both have similar economic
mass.
As global value chains grow in size and complexity, and as more economies partici-
pate in the world system more deeply and create (or modify) the institutions that govern
it, questions of this nature are increasingly important for understanding a range of out-
comes related to trade and the economy. What is true of trade is true of all domains in the
international system. To answer these questions, we must have some sense of the entire
topology of International Relations in each domain, and how these have been changing
over time.12 Complex network models allow us to analyze these questions directly by
uncovering the growth logics embedded in international networks. If we develop a strong
understanding of the ways in which global networks emerge, evolve, and are shaped and
reshaped over time then we can not only better understand the importance of interde-
pendence, but also uncover the organization of structural power, through charting out
changes to particular forms of structural prominence. It might allow us to note that coun-
try i possesses gatekeeping power within a community, which has grown over time, but
country j has been able to retain a more systemically influential position as the network
has grown and adapted. Thus, working in a complex network framework allows us to
think differently about the way we model outcomes in the world. It allows us to ask dif-
ferent sets of questions and draw from a theoretical and methodological toolkit that is
designed for answering not only the new questions, but the older ones too.
Many traditional research designs are less capable of answering these questions,
which is why Strange argued that structural power could only be uncovered via historical
analysis: the inference (structural power) is inferred from the observed outcome.
Similarly, in a qualitative research design, it will be difficult—if not impossible—to fully
render a networked system, and map out all of the relations within it. Indeed, for qualita-
tive researchers, it will usually be better to begin from a realization of the network, and
then examine outcomes within that system, given the known distribution of linkages
within it, at a more granular level. Traditional quantitative researchers often analyze how
variation in some factor x is associated with variation in some outcome y across cases
and/or time, as in our example of trade. In a quantitative research design, the average
relationship between these two is often expressed in terms of β, such that a unit change
in x is associated with a β change in y: for any €1 increase in trade, GDP is expected to
grow by β amount, on average, across all cases, ceteris paribus. In a complex network
approach, quantitative researchers can explore how y outcomes vary not solely as a func-
tion of x, but also partly due to the structure of relationships within which the units are
embedded.
Simply put, a complex network approach allows us to consider how structural inter-
dependence impacts outcomes, which regression-based statistical models cannot do: the
same amount of change in x could produce very different changes in y across units i and
j, if i and j are differently embedded within their respective networks g. The structural
Winecoff 217
context matters, in other words, and complex network analysis allows us to take that
context into account. To put this into concrete terms, consider the following regression
equation:
yit = α 0 + β1 xit + β 2 gt yit + β 3 gt xit + ε it (2)
where yit is an outcome for unit i at time t, xit is an attribute(s) of a unit that covaries with
yit, gt is the realization of the network of relationships connecting all units it, and εit is an
error term. α0 is similar to the intercept of a regression line, β1 is the parameter estimat-
ing the direction and amount that xit and yit covary, β2 is the estimate of the endogenous
effect of the network gt on realizations of itself, while β3 is the exogenous effect of the
covariates on the outcome, conditional on the network. Therefore, β2gtyit and β3gtxit are
similar to interaction terms in normal regressions: if the units are not connected (gt = 0)
or if the connections are not meaningful (β2 + β3 = 0), then the above is a simple linear
regression model, where yit changes with xit by amount β1 (plus random error). This
would tell us that the network structure of the data does not affect outcomes: observa-
tions are realized independently from each other.
But if gt ≠ 0, then outcomes are influenced by the network structure of the data and
observations are not generated independently. If they are treated as if they were inde-
pendent by omitting β2gtyit and β3gtxit and running a normal linear regression, then the
estimate of β1 will be biased, and our inferences regarding the relationship between x and
y will be biased, even if we properly model all time series and panel effects. The inclu-
sion of g places interdependence in the functional form of the model, and in the param-
eter estimates from it, but it also tells us that not all interdependent systems are
interdependent in the same ways. g can vary, just as x and y can vary.
Who among us is confident that g = β2 = β3 = 0 most of the time, as in our earlier
discussion of the relationship between trade and growth? Certainly not Susan Strange, but
it is my belief that very few of us really think that. We all appreciate, intuitively, that struc-
tures impact outcomes by constraining some actors and empowering others in a wide
range of ways that are quite powerful. At times, these structures might be more powerful,
in terms of generating any particular outcome, than the cumulative actions of an agent. At
the individual level we might emphasize structures that divide social systems into net-
worked communities according to class, race, gender, geography, age, education, or other
factors. At the international level we often try to assign countries to different groupings
such as major powers, developing countries, emerging markets, regional powers, hegem-
onic powers, etc. Many of these are analytically useful in particular contexts, but ulti-
mately the assignment of who belongs in what group is arbitrary, and the pathway to move
from one group to another is vaguely specified. Complex network science allows us to
uncover the actual structure of interdependence in a system, and to simultaneously explore
the interplay between structure and agency in that system.
Structural power and the FPA model

Susan Strange argued that structural power could only be traced through historical
analysis, not quantitative modeling of the sort practiced during her career, because
those methods were not capable of rendering structure. When others offered a critique
of her casually offered measures of structural power (Milner and Snyder, 1988), she
responded by saying that the critique was “technically correct but logically irrele-
vant” because perceptions about the decline of American power “have arisen through
looking at the wrong indicators” (Strange, 1988b: 751). Strange did not have the
language or method of modern complex network science, most of which did not exist
at the time of her writing, but she intuitively understood its logics far better than most
at the time: from the perspective of 2020, it seems odd to have argued that American
power was in terminal decline in 1988, despite the fact that many of the traditional
country-level metrics were suggesting just that. But versions of the same argument,
using many of the same indicators (or variants of them), still take place today. To
inform this debate, and gain a more general understanding of how International
Relations evolves over time, perhaps we can use modern complex network science to
craft a theory and method that satisfies the contemporary demands for empirical rigor
while also incorporating the useful intuitions from the inductive framework proposed
by Strange.
A reasonable place to start is with the expectation that structural power is derived
from some form of network prominence, or several of them in combination, and that
network prominence is a function of both the internal attributes (or characteristics, or
behaviors) of a node (e.g., a state) and its position within the distribution of network link-
ages in a given domain (e.g., trade) in world politics. If structural power is conceptually
useful at all, it must take some form similar to this operationalization. The internal attrib-
utes include the xit factors from equation 2 above, while the latter is the particular realiza-
tion of gt. From this starting point, we can begin to create a model in which xit and gt both
contribute to outcomes y at yt+1, yt+2, and so on. But we can go further. It may also be
useful to understand the generative model of g itself, because g tell us the organizational
structure of the network, and prominence within this network is an indication of struc-
tural power. We can also define hegemony in these terms: as core network positioning
across the range of domains in world politics. This mirrors Strange’s own understanding
of the concept, given that Strange (1987) approvingly quotes Wallerstein (1984)’s defini-
tion of hegemony as “that situation in which the ongoing rivalry between the so-called
‘great powers’ is so unbalanced that one power is truly primus inter pares; that is, one
power can largely impose its rules and its wishes (at the very least by effective veto
power) in the economic, political, military, diplomatic and even cultural arenas” (p.
557). If hegemony is a function of structural power, and structural power is gained via
centrality within global structures, then hegemonic structural power can be thought of as
a complex network phenomenon.
Thus, if we can build a generative model of g then we can uncover the determinants
of structural power and, if g is sufficiently hierarchical, of hegemony and the distribution
of power more generally. Of particular theoretical interest for the question of system
ordering—which can itself be thought of in complex network terms—in world politics,
which contains hierarchies that may confer structural power, is the “fitness plus prefer-
ential attachment” (FPA) model of network formation and evolution.13
FPA is a model of network growth over time. In the FPA model, the distribution of
links in the network at time t + 1 is a function of two factors: the quality (or “fitness”) of
Winecoff 219
the units in the system—because higher-quality units will likely attract links at a greater
rate than lower-quality units—and the prior distribution of the links at time t because
more-popular units attract new links at a greater-than-random rate through “preferential
attachment.”14
In our context, a country’s fitness could be defined by national-level attributes (xit)
that are thought to confer power, such as economic mass or military capabilities, while
the distribution of network links determines the possibility for preferential attachment,
within the network, as it grows over time.15 It is important to briefly note that the model
is F + PA, not F vs PA. That is, in the FPA model both the attributes of a state and the
structure of the system interact, in complex ways, to produce evolution in the network
over time (and thus, in our framework, evolutions of the distribution of structural power
over time). Thus, a “horse race” between “F” factors and “PA” factors, with the goal of
determining which of the two is important, is contradictory to the FPA model, in which
both are important. But not only do these factors not work in opposition to each other,
they often powerfully reinforce each other such that a fitness advantage at time t can
attract new links t + 1, those links attract future links via preferential attachment at time
t + 2 (which subsequently attract still more links in the future) while also generating
positive outcomes that can strengthen future fitness at time t + 2 (and at future time
steps).
Let’s return to our hypothetical example of international trade to see an illustration of
this process at work. Suppose we learn that the relationship between trade volume and
economic growth is interdependent with the position of a national economy within the
global trading network g in combination with domestic factors xit (i.e., the fitness of
country i at time t). If we wish to then understand the future growth potential of an
economy, we must not only try to understand potential changes to xi over time but also
potential changes to g. If preferential attachment exists within the network g, we need a
model capable of uncovering it. The FPA model provides such an opportunity, and this is
explored in greater detail below, but first let us return to the hypothetical trading system
we introduced above. Suppose that j initially has higher fitness than i and k because it has
a larger economy at time t, which allows it to attract trading links to both while i and k
are only connected to each other indirectly (through their ties to j). That increased trade
has an economic benefit for j—its GDP grows, and so its fitness increases—but also
embeds j at the core of the trading network. Now suppose that m enters the network at a
later stage, as an economy with the largest GDP of any in the system (and thus the great-
est fitness in our toy model). Would we expect i and k to severe their trading links with j
in order to pursue new links to m? According to equation 1, the answer is “yes”: we
should see a massive, structural reorganization of the trading system in response to the
entrance of m. But according to equation 2 it is less clear. j already has valuable trading
links with i and k, which might make it a more attractive partner to m. And if j becomes
connected to m then i and k have an even greater incentive to remain connected to j, even
if they also eventually generate ties to m themselves. Thus, m joining the network could
very well increase j’s network prominence despite the fact that m has higher fitness than
j, as a response to the fact that j was the most prominent prior to m joining the network.
This would be evidence of preferential attachment at work, although it would be false to
say that fitness does not also matter.
If we think about changes to the real-world global trading system a pattern somewhat
like this emerges. In the immediate post–World War II period the United States clearly
had the highest fitness: it was the largest economy and was also preeminent financially
and in terms of its security resources. The United States pursued economic integration
for both economic and political reasons: economically, there were opportunities for joint
gains as countries rebuilt from the war and Depression; politically, establishing a new
system of institutionalized economic integration, with the United States at its core, pro-
vided ways for the United States to keep its allies close and its rivals isolated. As more
countries integrated into this trading system, two possible things might have happened:
the structural position of the United States might have eroded as its share of total GDP in
the trading network declined—i.e., as its relative fitness advantage eroded—or it may
have remained structurally prominent as newly trading economies (first postwar Europe,
then East Asia, then postcommunist countries and emerging markets in every region)
preferred to attach themselves to the most prominent node in the network: the United
States. Many of Susan Strange’s interlocuters in the 1980s expected the former, but we
now know that the latter was a more accurate view of the latter half of the 20th century.
In other words, the FPA model allows us to include both node-level “fitness” attrib-
utes, such as those associated with the power base in traditional analyses, and system-
level processes in the same model. The following equation represents this formally, as
adapted by the complex network scientists Bianconi and Barabási (2001):
ηiϕi
P ri = (3)
∑
j
∈N
η jϕ j
where ηi represents the number of connections of unit i to the rest of the network (i.e., i’s
“degree centrality”) and φi is a parameter representing the fitness of i; φi could either be
a single variable or a vector of multiple attributes. An i with few prior connections (η),
or an i with poor quality according to relevant attributes (φ), will attract new connections
with a low probability (Pri) relative to other units j in the network that have more con-
nections (ηj) and/or higher fitness (φj).
Less formally, this tells us that both the quality of unit attributes and the quantity of
connections jointly determine the distribution of ties as the network develops over time:
the fitness part of the process comes from attributes (which are treated as exogenously
given, in analogous fashion to “independent” variables in regression analyses), but pref-
erential attachment is an endogenous process guided by the ex ante distribution of link-
ages in the system. That is, the FPA model proposes an interaction between agency and
structure. Moreover, it tells that—given a sufficiently unequal “degree distribution” (i.e.,
the distribution of network linkages)—even substantial changes in the relative fitness of
units in the system may not be enough to alter the system’s structure by rearranging
which units occupy the core of the network. In other words, a change in the distribution
of global GDP may not generate a change in the distribution of links in the trade network.
Preferential attachment can be a very powerful force, as illustrated in Figure 1: as the
network grows its core becomes more deeply entrenched, and the network centrality
rises as its attracts more and more connections, which allows it to obtain greater influ-
ence over the network over time.
Winecoff 221
Figure 1. Networks simulated according to the Bianconi-Barabasi “fitness plus preferential
attachment” complex network model in equation 3, using the “PAFit” package in the statistical
computing language R. As the network grows from 10 nodes to 100, then 250, and finally 500,
the core of the network is strengthened and internally cohesive communities form, most of
which are connected to each other only indirectly through the core.
The FPA model expects increasing prominence for the ex ante prominent as the net-
work density increases over time. The longer this process is in motion, the harder it will
be for i to catch up even if they install the same policies and practices that initially made
j attractive, and thus reach fitness parity. In fact, just duplicating the prior successful
strategy will almost certainly be insufficient for enabling one unit to displace another at
the core of the system, because over time ηj will grow much larger than ηi. Instead, the
rising economy will need to innovate on its fitness in order to gain a new quality advan-
tage in φi > φj. This is often difficult to do, since ex ante structural prominence generates
rewards that can be reinvested into fitness by the incumbent, while preferential attach-
ment continues to grow and strengthen. But this is not destiny. If an initial fitness advan-
tage is reversed because other nodes are capable of internally developing at a more rapid
rate than the old core, and/or because the core chooses to sever its connections with
others and thus reduces the iterative power of preferential attachment, then the old core
may decline while a new core emerges.
If the FPA model is correct, we might consider whether contemporary expectations of
American decline are likely to hold true. Strange believed that such determinations could
only be revealed through a careful analysis of history, and thus shied away from forecast-
ing. Nevertheless, International Relations scholars are prone to expectation. Certainly
there is reason to think that the United States’ fitness is no longer so impressive given the
recent enormous financial crisis centered on the American financial sector, its poor
response to the Covid-19 shock (both economically and in terms of publich health), the
perceived erosion of the legitimacy of liberal norms, institutional fragmentation both
domestically and internationally, and the rise of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and
South Africa (BRICS) and other emerging powers. At the same time, preferential attach-
ment may be powerful enough to keep the United States in a core position, just as the US
banking sector increased in its network prominence following the Global Financial Crisis
of 2007–9 (Fichtner, 2017; Winecoff, 2015). The FPA model would suggest that a struc-
tural transformation away from US hegemony might not occur despite the fitness growth
of others in the system, unless (a) those fitness advantages far surpass the United States’
quality; and/or (b) the pre-existing network structure fragments as ex ante linkages are
destroyed, which are then rebuilt around a new core, as happened during previous peri-
ods of hegemonic transition. If we have an empirical strategy for measuring structures
and a theoretical framework for understanding system processes, then both of these
might be observable in real time, and thus we may not be constrained only to post hoc
analysis of history.
Thus, the FPA model is ideally suited to examining the potential for American decline,
Chinese hegemony, or other structural changes to the international system. Let’s again
stick with trade for the moment. Many believe that we are living through a potential power
transition today, because rising powers (especially China) possess high fitness (e.g., large
and rapidly growing GDP) and are clearly interested in obtaining network prominence
through strengthening ties not only with the Old Core, which would paradoxically rein-
force their legacy core status but also through investments into new relationships through
the Belt and Road and other initiatives. And, at the same time, the current American presi-
dent has been attacking trade linkages with all of the United States’ largest trading part-
ners, thus potentially weakening preferential attachment. I return in the conclusion to the
discussion of the conditions under which this process may decay, or even reverse, with
implications for power transition and system transformation.
For now, let us note that whether structural power is currently being redistributed,
whether China (or anyone else) is displacing the United States (or others) at the core of
global networks, is ultimately an empirical question. The advantage of the FPA model is
that it allows us to consider both types of factors—those related to country attributes,
plus those related to system structure—in a holistic framework, rather than choosing
between them. We can descriptively assess the plausibility of the stylized FPA model by
examining the distribution of links across nodes over time, a procedure that I develop in
the next section. We can also seek to measure the relative contribution of these factors
inferentially using classes of models I discuss later on. These can help us understand why
structural power may be durable across time, even as profound changes to the distribu-
tion of countries’ fitness are observed. That is, unlike many monadic or dyadic concep-
tualizations of power in International Relations, the FPA model emphasizes the interplay
between unit attributes and system structure. In terms of international power, this means
that we should not only consider size, wealth, and resources as determinants of power, as
is common with measures like the Composite Index of Material Capabilities (CINC)
scores, but also endogenous processes that generate nonlinear development of the sys-
tem, the structure of interdependence within which all internationally active units exist.
Winecoff 223
In what follows, I empirically render the international system across the four domains
that Strange emphasized: credit and finance; trade and production; diplomacy and secu-
rity; and human capital and social relations.16 Strange considered these to be as the four
sides of a pyramid, each of which supports the other three, so it is sensible to examine
them in connection, and across time. I compare these empirics to the existing state of
the literature in each domain. While a full inferential test of the FPA model in all
domains is beyond the scope of this paper, the evidence below is broadly consistent with
the FPA model, and in particular with the argument that structural power in International
Relations is at least partially guided by endogenous feedback related to system struc-
ture. Likewise, a multiplex network analysis—in which these domains are integrated
into a multidimensional “network of networks” that emphasizes the cross-domain inter-
dependence in the system—also deserves its own analysis, which I discuss in the con-
clusion but for reasons of space must leave to the future. Thus, this article is intended as
a first step, not the last one. Later steps must embed actors’ choices within the structural
context within which they operate (Winecoff, 2017a), and thus more carefully analyze
the ways in which agents and structure interact, over time, to produce outcomes in the
international system.
Indeed, the FPA model is uniquely well-suited to such an exercise because it includes
unit-level attributes and system-level endogenous processes in a common analytical
framework. Throughout, I focus on the relative network positions of the United States
and its most plausible hegemonic rival, China, while also assessing the extent to which a
nonhegemonic (e.g. multipolar) system may be emerging.
Assessing the FPA model for structural power in world

politics
If we conceive of hegemony in world politics as a partial function of positioning within
global structures, such that occupying prominent positions within these structures confers
structural power, then the question of whether the FPA model plausibly guides the evolu-
tion of the system over time is relevant for establishing not only a static portrait of the
distribution of structural power at any given point in time but also can help us track past
changes and generate expectations for the future evolution of the system. FPA is a model
of system dynamics, in which ex ante system prominence endogenously begets future
system prominence, unless there is a substantial revision of the fitness distribution.
To make such an assessment there are two things to consider. The first is establishing
the existence of a hegemonic power by understanding the organization of the system, in
terms of which countries possess network prominence to what extent, and how that dis-
tribution of prominence has changed over time. If one country is clearly more network-
central across domains, then we can say that country is hegemonic (in the sense of the
term meant by Strange, following Wallerstein). If not, or if there is substantial instability
in the organization of the system over time, then either no hegemon exists and/or we may
be witnessing a shift from one to another.
To establish that there is a hegemonic system structure I employ measures of network
centrality. These are derived from the distribution of countries’ “degree”: the number of,
strength of, and/or qualitative nature of its connections to others in the system. For
example, the degree of a country in the trading system would be a simple count of the
number of other countries it trades with. The degree “strength” would sum up not only
the number of connections but also the quantitative amount of activity taking place in
each one of them. So a country that trades e5 billion with another country would have
greater strength than a country that trades e3 billion with the same country. Either of
these can be directed, such that “in-strength” refers to the total amount of imports into a
country from all other countries, while “out-strength” captures total exports.
In addition to a simple count of the number of ties a country has, or the strength of
those ties, several other measures are useful in this exercise. The first is eigen-vector
centrality, a measure of network prominence that calculates not only how well-connected
a given node is, but how well-connected it is to other well-connected nodes.
If a country scores highly in terms of eigenvector centrality, then it not only has a lot
of connections but it has the “right” ones: it is better connected to other prominent coun-
tries than to peripheral ones. Eigenvector centrality is thus a good measure of overall
structural prominence, of being “in the thick of things,” and may denote structural power.
But other forms of prominence may also be important. As discussed above, International
Relations scholars have also emphasized the gatekeeping and brokerage power that
belongs to nodes that connect otherwise-isolated clusters of the network (Carpenter,
2011; Goddard, 2009). Betweenness centrality is commonly used for this concept, as it
measures the number of shortest paths in the network that run through a given country. If
a country provides many paths to otherwise poorly connected countries (or clusters of
countries), then it may be able to control flows of information, resources, or access to and
from those countries (clusters). In combination these two measures capture overall net-
work influence as well as gatekeeping potential, two features that have been previously
established as important in International Relations research. Which of these measures is
most important depends on the particular questions being asked, but if they all reveal
similar patterns—i.e., j is more prominent than i by all measures—then that is a strong
indication that j possesses substantial structural power, while i does not.
The second consideration regards the plausibility of the FPA model, which predicts
the emergence of a sharp core–periphery structure as the network develops over time, in
describing these observed data. In its ideal form, this “scale-free” network resembles a
hub-and-spoke system wherein most countries are connected to those in the center but
are otherwise disconnected from each other. The FPA model expects this distribution
to congeal as the network grows over time, eventually conforming to a power-law
distribution.17 This is portrayed in Figure 2, which plots the distribution of connections—
or node “degree”—for the networks simulated in Figure 1. As the network grows in size,
the distribution of links between nodes grows increasingly unequally, such that a small
number of hubs possess a great many links—notice the growing Y-axis scale—while
most have very few.
Power-law distributions were thought to be extremely common in early applications
of complex network science to real-world systems (Barabási, 2016). Subsequent scholar-
ship has called that into question, finding that true scale-free networks characterized by
power-law distributions are relatively rare (Broido and Clauset, 2019). At the same time,
as several leading scholars of the statistics of networks put it, “For some measured quan-
tities, the answers to questions of scientific interest may not rest upon the distribution
Winecoff 225
Figure 2. The degree distribution of networks in Figure 1 simulated according to the
Bianconi-Barabasi “fitness plus preferential attachment” model, using the “PAFit” package in
R. As the network grows from 10 nodes to 100, then 250, and finally 500, the core of the
network is strengthened. The degree distribution is ordered from largest to smallest and
reflects exponential decay indicative of “scale-free” complex networks that contain preferential
attachment.
following a power law perfectly. It may be enough, for example, that a quantity merely
have a heavy-tailed distribution” such as a log-normal distribution (Clauset et al., 2009:
30). Indeed, even as pure-form scale-free networks are rare yet preferential attachment
processes are much more common according to Broido and Clauset (2019), who note
that “for some types of calculations. . . scale-free networks can be useful models, even
when real-world degree distributions are simply heavy tailed, rather than scale free.”
Therefore, for our purposes, it is sufficient to examine whether real-world networks in
International Relations are similar enough to a power-law distribution to warrant more
explicit testing of which generative complex network model most closely resembles the
observed data (Denny, 2016).18 To do this, I employ the methodology proposed by
Clauset et al. (2009). They recommend using Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K-S) tests of dis-
tributional similarity, where the reference distribution is the power-law and the compari-
son distribution is taken from the degree distribution of each network. The null hypothesis
of the K-S test is that the observed distribution is a power-law, and it returns a p-value as
a statistical test of that hypothesis, so failing to reject the null hypothesis is support for
the plausibility of the power-law fit to the observed data.
If we observe one state ranking highly in the prominence metrics of eigenvector and
betweenness centrality, then we may conclude that the system is hegemonic. If this per-
sists over time that may be evidence in favor of a preferential attachment mechanism
consistent with the FPA model, which can “lock in” the structural power of states over
long periods of time. If a subsequent K-S test fails to reject the null hypothesis that the
observed distribution is a power-law, then that provides further statistical support for the
model, which can be further tested using fully specified models (i.e., including country-
level “fitness” attributes) that are beyond the scope of this analysis, but which are dis-
cussed in the concluding section.
The structure of global finance

In most emerging-market countries over the previous two decades, the bursting of domestic
financial bubbles was accompanied by capital flight, which only exacerbated these countries’
financial crises by generating exchange rate depreciation and higher interest rates. But foreign
funding of the United States—both public and private—continued during the crisis, even as the
United States lowered interest rates dramatically. . . . IPE scholars have not yet produced
detailed explanations for the foreign support provided during the crisis. . . . But it seems very
likely that one of the most important explanations was the structural position of the United
States in global financial markets (Helleiner, 2011: 81, emphasis added).
Control of the international system of finance and credit may be the most important
aspect of structural power. It makes everything else possible (Khanna and Winecoff,
2020). It allows some states (and the citizens of those states) to obtain purchasing power
without having to earn it; to engage in excess spending on the tools of security19; to
acquire goods and services that raise standards of living; to insulate from the pressures
of global markets, such as bond market discipline and the risk of “sudden stop” financial
crises (Cohen, 2006); to the use of credit to incentivize (or even compel) reforms in for-
eign countries that are aligned with one’s interests (Copelovitch, 2010; Oatley and
Yackee, 2004); to the inexpensive financing of economic investment that generates
future growth in leading sectors. Besides conferring more general forms of influence,
structural power in international finance can also enhance relational-power capabilities
because those generally cost money: if one state can create money with global accept-
ance, and its firms can profit from the global dissemination of that money, then that state
is at a significant advantage. Or, as (Strange, 1987: 565) put it, structural power in finance
and credit is the privilege “to acquire purchasing power without having either to work or
to trade it.”
The United States was not always advantaged in global finance, but by the end of
World War II, it was dominant. The United States was a large net creditor that controlled
80% of the world’s gold supply, and the dollar was embedded into a position of money
centrality through the Bretton Woods arrangements, the dollar’s role as a trade settlement
currency, as well as dollar-denominated postwar loans and grants. At that moment the
Winecoff 227
American financial sector was clearly the most fit of any economy, and the US govern-
ment used that position to rebuild the global financial networks that had disintegrated
during the 1930s Depression, but with itself at the core. While the Bretton Woods system
was doomed from the start (Triffin, 1960), it survived long enough for global networks
organized around the greenback to form and strengthen. This sustained the dollar’s role
even after Bretton Woods collapsed in the early 1970s, to the surprise of many who
argued that American mismanagement of the monetary system would lead others to look
for alternatives (Triffin, 1978). Indeed, much of the scholarly work to which Susan
Strange was responding argued that the end of Bretton Woods was a signal moment indi-
cating that US hegemony was fast eroding.
That didn’t happen. The global monetary system is still organized around the dollar to
a surprising extent, global finance is still dominated by American institutions—and, to a
lesser extent, the United Kingdom, as a vestige of its prior hegemony that also appears to
be driven by residual preferential attachment—and the recent Global Financial Crisis has
not altered this structure. In fact, American prominence in global banking increased fol-
lowing the crash, while the BRICS remain quite peripheral despite their strong real eco-
nomic growth in recent years (Fichtner, 2017; Oatley et al., 2013; Winecoff, 2015). This
may partially be the result of domestic political choices in those countries to remain
partially closed to global capital movements (Aizenman et al., 2008), but for countries
with open capital accounts there is also evidence from descriptive and inferential statisti-
cal network analyses that support the preferential attachment mechanism (Winecoff,
2013). Even the emergence of offshore financial havens is dominated by Anglo-American
finance (Fichtner, 2014). This private sector financial dominance—and the infrastructure
related to it, such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
(SWIFT) payments system—allows the US government to threaten, or impose, financial
sanctions and regulatory rules on others (Emmenegger, 2015; Farrell and Newman,
2019; Oatley and Winecoff, 2012).
The currency and finance systems are closely related in Strange’s conceptualization,
and prominence within one most likely reinforces prominence in the other. For the pur-
pose of clarity, in the main text of this article I primarily focus on portfolio financial
investment as an example of this phenomenon.20 The American influence in global
finance comes from both the private and public sectors, which are themselves deeply
interdependent. The provision of dollar liquidity in the form of credit and equity invest-
ment by multinational financial firms plays a major role in what types of investment,
production, and exchange are feasible globally. And because so much of the world’s
financial system is tied to financial markets in the United States, how the American pri-
vate and public sectors conduct themselves has far-reaching effects (Bauerle Danzman
et al., 2017; Oatley et al., 2013).
American finance is privileged by having access to most-used global currency, but it
is the way in which the money is used that generates substantial structural power for the
United States. Portfolio investment is important for structural power because confer sub-
stantial amounts of economic control through its two main components: equity owner-
ship and debt. The benefits of ownership include the ability to capture profit, to control
the investment decisions of firm management, and to secure economic rents over time.
But controlling the supply of credit is also important, as it determines to a significant
Figure 3. Eigenvector (y-axis) vs betweenness (x-axis) centrality for 2005, 2009, and 2015.
Data taken from the IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey. The specific indicator is
assets, including total investment. Over the time period the United States has always been the
most prominent financial economy in the world by both measures of centrality, and the gap
between the United States and the rest of the world has been increasing over time.
extent where in the world investment takes place. Thus, structural power in the portfolio
investment system provides financial rewards, but it is also related to production in the
world economy discussed in more detail below.
Figure 3 shows the distribution of eigenvector and betweenness centrality in the
global portfolio investment network. It is clearly a hierarchical system, with the United
States not only the most prominent on both dimensions—meaning that the United States
is the most well-connected and also provides the most paths through the network but is
increasingly so over time. This trend may have temporarily been slowed by the Global
Financial Crisis, as the American financial sector fell slightly on betweenness centrality
in 2009. But even then the prominence of the United States did not substantially erode
on either dimension, most likely because of the efforts of American policymakers to
stabilize the system in such a way as to preserve US finance at the system’s core that
protected the US market’s “flight to safety” status (Winecoff, 2016). Notably, no rising
powers are prominent in these networks (although tax havens are occasionally visible
Winecoff 229
too). The United States—and to a lesser extent the European Old Core—still control the
system of global investment. This is what a “scale-free” network looks like: a small
number of countries with high levels of network prominence, with an exponential decay
in the distribution of centrality after that.
While Figure 3 indicates that the power distribution in global finance remains hegem-
onic, we still must assess the plausibility of the FPA model in generating this result.
Table 1 provides fairly strong evidence that it might. The table shows P-values from K-S
tests of distributional similarity between the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Coordinated Portfolio Invesment Survey (CPIS) networks and a power-law (which is
what the FPA model produces) at each point in time. Here, the distributions are taken
from weighted and directed degree scores for each country, which is a simple sum of the
number and amount of cross-national portfolio investment ties, sorted by whether a
country is receiving (in-strength) or sending (out-strength) portfolio finance.21 As the
table indicates, only one of these scores approaches the traditional 0.05 P-value needed
to reject the null hypothesis of a power-law: in-strength in 2009. That is not very surpris-
ing, given the severity of the financial crisis during that time. But even in the face of that
shock the United States’ core position in global finance was not permanently dislodged.
The FPA model suggests that in order for US prominence in the financial system to
dissipate two conditions must be met. First, the relative fitness advantage of the United
States must decline. If the subprime financial crisis did not cause this to happen, it is dif-
ficult to imagine a scenario in which it could, absent significant fracturing of global
financial networks. It is this question that preoccupies much of the IPE of finance litera-
ture—the question of φ factors of national capabilities and how they relate to the distribu-
tion of financial power and monetary structure.22 The often-mentioned potential fitness
factors that could generate centrality in global finance include control over access to a
large economy, deep and liquid financial markets, maintenance of an open capital
account, and a transparent and predictable political system with strong rule of law and
private property protections. In many of these areas, the United States is no longer in a
position of supreme advantage: the EU common market is the world’s largest economy,
and in aggregate China is approaching America’s size.23 China’s capital account is not
fully open, but it is able to use Hong Kong as an international financial center, while
Europe contains several of them. And while the EU and China may both have suboptimal
governance, arguably so does the United States, which has recently presided over an
enormous financial crisis, political gridlock that nearly led to an unforced sovereign debt
default, and the election of a president who eschews multilateralism and the maintenance
of an open (and institutionalized) global economy. As such, it is not clear that American
fitness is substantially greater than some of its rivals, at least any longer.
As such, an attributes-based view would certainly expect something more like a
multipolar global financial system to be emerging over time, perhaps with a distribution
of ties that follows fairly linearly from the distribution of “fitness” capabilities. Yet that
is not what we see in the empirics. Instead, the establishment of the euro, and the rise of
China and other regional powers, have—if anything—reinforced the position of the
American financial sector, and also the usage of the dollar in the international monetary
system (see the appendix), which suggests that preferential attachment may be guiding
network evolution. Thus, if China’s effort to more fully internationalize the RMB is
Table 1. P-values from Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests of similarity between the observed degree
distributions of the CPIS networks in Figure 3 and a power-law, where the null hypothesis is
that the distributions are the same. We clearly fail to reject the null hypothesis in all cases,
except for the in-strength distribution in 2009 (during the height of the Global Financial Crisis).
Thus, the power-law distribution is a plausible fit for this network.
2005 2009 2015

In-Strength 0.827 0.053 0.136
Out-Strength 0.214 0.236 0.186
eventually successful, it may represent less of a structural challenge than an integration

into the network, as did the creation of the euro and Japan’s attempts to internationalize
the yen in previous periods.24 If China’s fitness improvements, in particular its economic
and population size, were strong enough to push it into the core of the global financial
system, this would be observable both in the descriptive graphics and—if it moves the
distribution away from a power-law-like distribution—the K-S tests. So far neither has
happened, nor looks particularly close to happening.
America’s influence in global finance remains profound and multidimensional, and
its network prominence in both public and private markets is remarkable in its persis-
tence. This indicates that the FPA model is a plausible description of outcomes in this
domain. If financial prominence is a precondition for hegemonic projects more generally
(Khanna and Winecoff, 2020; Sobel, 2012, 2014), then the United States is well-posi-
tioned both now and for the foreseeable future.
The structure of production and trade

[T]he location of productive capacity is far less important than the location of the people who
make the key decisions on what is to be produced, where and how, and who design, direct and
manage to sell successfully on a world market. Is it more desirable that Americans should wear
blue collars and mind the machines or that they should wear white collars and design, direct and
finance the whole operation (Strange, 1988a: 5)?
There are three ways to think about control over the subsystems of production and
exchange in the world economy. The first is to simply map who is trading final goods
with whom according to the official national accounting statistics. In this approach an
iPhone that is finally assembled in China but sold in the United States registers as an
expensive export from China to the United States. The second approach considers the
value added to the production a good at different stages of the production process to
account for the fact that an American corporation contributes much the value of an
iPhone, while other countries (e.g., Japan) also contribute via the production of compo-
nent parts, while a Chinese assembly line contributes very little; thus considering an
iPhone as an $800 export from China to the United States obscures where the economic
value is generated (Dedrick et al., 2010, 2011). The third type focuses on where produc-
tion decisions are made, and to whom corporate profits accrue, as global production
becomes increasingly embedded in global value chains that are overseen by dense mul-
tinational corporate structures (Heemskerk et al., 2018; Starrs, 2013).
Winecoff 231
Much of the discussion of the decline of the United States in trade, and the concomi-
tant rise of China and other emerging powers, uses traditional measures based on final
goods (and in particular exports). By these measures, China has been the world’s largest
exporter since 2009, followed by the United States, Germany, and Japan. But less and
less of the value of world trade takes place in final goods that are produced solely in one
country and then sold in another. As a result, increasing attention is being placed on
measures that better capture the complexity of multinational production and exchange,
such as those that attempt to locate where value is added in the production process.25
In recent years, China has also surpassed the United States in terms of value-added in
exports, although American growth during that period has also been strong,26 and the
United States still dominates in terms of imports, which is the main driver of global
demand.27 The FPA model suggests that there should be powerful endogenous processes
that guide network development and change. Few analyses have attempted to test this
hypothesis directly, as economic theories of trade contain few expectations of higher-
order dependencies (such as preferential attachment) that are often found in complex
networks, but one recent analysis has found that there are strong network effects—such
as reciprocity and clustering—in global trade that swamp commonly emphasized spatial
factors such as geographical proximity and cultural affinity (Ward et al., 2013).28 Because
most network dependencies reward those that are already well-connected, this provides
more support for the expectation of continued American (as well as German and Chinese)
prominence.29
A look at network statistics bears this out. Figure 4 shows eigenvector and between-
ness centralities in the trade network for the years 2008 and 2015, using the inter-country
input–output data from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Organisation for
Economic and Co-operation’s (OECD) “Trade in Value-Added” database.
The position of the United States has not changed: it is still the best connected to other
well-connected economies (eigenvector centrality) in trade as well as functioning as a
bridge by providing the most short pathways through the trading system. China’s growth
is clearly evident, and it is now the second-most important economy by these metrics, but
in relative terms China’s rise has come at the expense of non-US countries in the Old
Core—especially Europe and Japan—rather than the United States. This should not be
very surprising. The United States is China’s largest trading partner, so as China increases
in trade centrality the United States will reciprocally benefit from the same process.
Table 2 shows that the power-law is a plausible distribution for these networks, as none
of the distributions have a P-value that is near traditional levels that would allow for
rejection of the null hypothesis that the distribution is a power-law, providing more evi-
dence that the FPA model well-describes the global trading system.30
Perhaps the rise of China does provide some evidence that its “fitness” in trade—in
particular its possession of a very large labor force, and its policy orientation toward
export-oriented growth (at least prior to 2009)—may be strong enough to overcome
preferential attachment processes that had previously kept the United States in a domi-
nant position. If so, then the global distribution of trade power could be moving away
from the United States, particularly if we think of the power that comes from trade as
stemming from where production takes place, geographically. This is certainly one
important component, but it can also be misleading. There is another aspect of the
Figure 4. Eigenvector (y-axis) vs betweenness (x-axis) centrality for 2008 and 2015. Data taken
from the World Trade Organization’s Trade-in-Value-Added database. During that period the
United States remained the best-connected overall and most important bridge in the network.
China’s rise is also evident, but it has not come at the expense of the United States. Instead, in
relative terms, Europe and Japan have suffered most from China’s rising network prominence.
distributions of the trade-in-value-added networks in Figure 4 and a power- law, where the null
hypothesis is that the distributions are the same. We clearly fail to reject the null hypothesis in
all cases. Thus, the power-law distribution is a plausible fit for this network.
2008 2015
In-Strength 0.699 0.781
Out-Strength 0.946 0.998
production-and-trading system that could be even more critical for locating power as
control over outcomes. In her original article on the persistent myth of lost hegemony,
Strange (1987: 565) emphasized that “those who are able to control the system of pro-
duction of goods and services” possessed structural power. Elsewhere she argued that
Winecoff 233
“[w]hat matters is the share of world output—of primary products, minerals and food
and manufactured goods and services—that is under the direction of the executives of
U.S. companies” (Strange, 1988a: 5).
In this regard, American economic power remains enormous even as China has grown
in the trading system. We have already seen that America is quite prominent in the port-
folio investment network, which includes equity ownership in its data. Other sources
paint a similar picture. In a significant study, Sean Starrs noted that the rise of multina-
tional and transnational corporations (MNCs and TNCs) and production networks have
allowed American corporations to maintain ownership control over huge swaths of the
world’s production, which they have effectively globalized (Starrs, 2013). According to
Starrs, US firms dominate profit shares across 18 of the 25 sectors of production described
by a list of the world’s top 2,000 firms, particularly those at the technological frontier.
American firms owned over 45% of the world’s top 500 TNCs in 2012; the next country
(Japan) controlled 8%. Many of these ratios have increased over the sample period ana-
lyzed by Starrs, despite the subprime crisis. Starrs argues that the rise of China and other
emerging markets in trade represents the globalization of American economic power,
and (for the first time) extension of that power to almost the entire world (Starrs, 2017).
That is, because of the US dominance of profit and ownership, China’s rise is “designed
in America” (Starrs, 2015). Despite its increasingly prominence in global trade, Chinese
convergence to the American level is a “chimera” because of the continued dominance
of American capital in systems of production (Starrs, 2014). And, of course, American
nonfinance capital benefits enormously from the prominence of American finance capi-
tal discussed in the previous section.
Other data—including those using network analysis—supports this view. American
finance is particularly influential in terms of ownership of other corporations,31 but it is
not the only sector that is internationally prominent. A study of the multinational produc-
tion network of corporate headquarters demonstrates that New York and London remain
the corporate capitals of the world (Wall and v. d. Knaap, 2011). A remarkably detailed
analysis of the global network of corporate ownership demonstrated that the top 147
corporates—in a sample of more than 43,000—owned 40% of all TNCs, and the top 737
shareholders—fewer than 1% of the total—controlled 80% of firms (Vitali et al., 2011).
Nearly half (23/50) of the top 50 of these were US firms; only one was Chinese in the
years under survey, and it was the 50th on the list (Glattfelder, 2013). Thus, in terms of
control over production and centrality of exchange, it is difficult to find evidence of
American decline. In some cases it is clear that the United States is becoming more
prominent in global production as the global economic network has grown over time,
rather than less, just as the FPA model would expect.
Moreover, the FPA model would lead us to a counterintuitive expectation: even
China’s rise may not presage the kind of systemic transformation that many expect. The
graphs above show that the growth in Chinese trade has not primarily come at the United
States’ expense. More importantly, thus far at least, China has grown by integrating into
the US-led trading system, rather than seeking to overturn it, which may further entrench
the United States’ position at the core. China has joined US-led institutions, embedded
itself in the United States’ production chains, and recycled its profits into American
financial markets. China trades with the United States most of all, as previous rising
powers (e.g., Germany and Japan) also did. Ultimately the rise of those countries rein-
forced American centrality rather than overthrowing it; the same could be true of China,
and perhaps other developing and emerging economies.
The structure of security

[I]t is this fundamental asymmetry in the security structure of the non-communist world that is
often and easily overlooked in contemporary discussion of international economic issues.
Always in the background, there is the contrast between the provision of security by the United
States defense forces and the dependence of its partners upon them (Strange, 1987: 566).
Many, if not most, analyses of global security prominence focus on monadic or dyadic
attributes that pertain to direct coercive and deterrent capabilities. Such variables often
include the amount of industrial production, size of the population, size of military per-
sonnel and expenditure, level of economic development, ownership of nuclear technol-
ogy, number of assets that can be deployed at air and sea, and (increasingly) cyber
expertise. While these are certainly important, and the United States ranks very highly
along all of these dimensions, structural factors strongly influence the ability to actually
use these capabilities to project power globally. In this section I focus on one important
element of structural power in security: the embeddedness of the United States within
defense agreement networks. This provides the means by which a nuclear umbrella has
been constructed and maintained, counterterrorism assets—both human and drone—are
deployed, interventionary forces are mobilized rapidly, and diplomatic pressure is used
to weaken or coerce recalcitrant states. Without them American power would be substan-
tially reduced even if it maintained similar raw capabilities.
The United States’ global basing network in some ways resembles an imperial archi-
tecture without incurring the costs of actual empire-building (Cooley and Nexon, 2013).
The US Department of Defense manages over 800 military installations around the world
as part of more than 6,000 total locations where the United States maintains physical
structures (United States Department of Defense, 2014; Vine, 2015). These support
active-duty troop deployments numbering over 170,000 in at least than 168 countries, in
addition to many thousands of civilian and diplomatic personnel.32 Needless to say, no
other country or group of countries maintains a similar global basing structure with such
a global reach—there is no point in creating a multinational network, because it is almost
entirely an American system—and this allows the United States to affect the global secu-
rity environment without over-extending its resources.
The United States is able to maintain such a global presence partially because of its
extensive alliance network, which far outpaces its geopolitical rivals. Indeed, China only
maintains one official mutual defense alliance, and it’s the one that arguably no country
would wish to have: North Korea. By contrast, the United States is connected to, and
sometimes bridges, almost every significant alliance community in the world, as Figure 5
makes clear.33 While some other countries are prominent on one dimension often because
of ties to the United States—only the United States is highly central on both. Maintenance
of this alliance hierarchy has been a major component of American geopolitics since at
least 1950 (Lake, 2009a). This institutional centrality has provided the United States
Winecoff 235
Figure 5. The eigenvector and betweenness centrality of global mutual-defense alliances in
2012. The data are taken from the Correlates of War.
with substantial power that is not generalizable: no other country in the international
system benefits from the same or similar position. Although American prominence does
allow other states to free-ride on American security provision (Hafner-Burton and
Montgomery, 2014), this only creates greater structural dependence on the United States.
for the provision of security, which in turn allows the United States to dictate the terms
of security provision (Strange, 1987).34 And the P-value for the K-S test of distributional
similarity to the power-law is 0.332, indicating a plausible fit that is consistent with the
FPA model.
American security prominence is related to its economic and financial prominence.
The fact that the United States can produce essentially unlimited amounts of the world’s
exchange and reserve currency provides a nearly inexhaustible ability to pursue its secu-
rity goals without sacrificing other domestic priorities (Oatley, 2015). No other country
is similarly unconstrained by global financial markets, so the United States’ structural
position at the core of global finance provides it with unique opportunities to extend its
influence globally. Although the alliance network is different from the economic net-
works described above, in that not all ties are desirable in the alliance network but they
(mostly) are in the economic networks, the distribution of prominence within institution-
alized network structures such as alliances is a significant predictor of the prevalence of
conflict in the system (Hafner-Burton and Montgomery, 2006): in a very hierarchical
system conflict propensity is low; when there are many countries with structurally simi-
lar levels of prestige conflict propensity is high.35
This system is highly durable over time, for reasons related to endogenous feedback
in a way that is consistent with the FPA model. While the US security apparatus was
similarly advantaged in its fitness during the same postwar period in which its monetary
hegemony was established, others now have similarly strong attributes. According to the
Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC) scores, China has had greater security
fitness since 1996 (and the USSR was more “capable” than the United States for the
majority of the Cold War).36 Neither was able to generate an alliance network that is as
strong or durable as the United States has worked to establish and maintain over the
decades, however. Moreover, the United States’ financial position allowed it to con-
stantly reinvest into generating leading security technologies, outspending its potential
rivals by multiples over long periods of time, thus reinforcing its own fitness attributes.
This, in turn, incentivized the United States’ partners to continue security cooperation,
while others regularly seek to join this community through the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and other institutions. The resulting positive feedback cycle
resembles a preferential attachment process.
Formal mutual-defense alliances are not the only means of security cooperation.
Kinne (2018) notes the proliferation of defense cooperation agreements (DCAs) in the
post–Cold War period, with more than a thousand such agreements now in effect, despite
much less change to the formal alliance structure. DCAs cover a wide range of security
relations, including joint military exercises, sharing of defense technology, arms pro-
curement, and intelligence sharing. These agreements may be particularly useful for
states that are unable to join strong alliance clusters, such as NATO, despite facing a
threatening security environment. Kinne finds substantial evidence for preferential
attachment in the DCA network, which he interprets as an informational mechanism:
states learn about desirability of DCAs with other states by observing the prior DCAs a
state has achieved, such that highly prominent states are able to attract more agreements
over time.37
The eigenvector and centrality scores for the DCA network are plotted in Figure 6.
There are a few interesting things to note. First, while the United States was the most
prominent user of DCAs in 1990, it has been eclipsed by a handful of countries in the
post–Cold War years. While the United States remains fairly central they are not alone:
in 2010 higher centrality scores (on one or both dimensions) were achieved by Brazil, the
Czech Republic, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Ukraine. Second, Kinne (2018) finds preferen-
tial attachment in this system, which is borne out by the K-S test of distributional similar-
ity to the power-law, as shown in Table 3. In each of these three years we cannot reject
the null hypothesis that a power-law exists, which is consistent with the FPA model.
Nevertheless, unlike the other networks we have observed this system is clearly not
hegemonic: instead, a “middle class” of countries have used DCAs to improve their
security position, either because they are relatively isolated in the alliance structure and/
or to reduce dependence on the major powers that dominate that system.
Winecoff 237
Figure 6. The eigenvector and betweenness centrality of defense cooperation agreements.
The data are described by Kinne (2020).
distributions of the defense cooperation networks in Figure 6 and a power-law, where the null
hypothesis is that the distributions are the same. We clearly fail to reject the null hypothesis in
all cases, so the power-law distribution is a plausible fit for this network.
1990 2000 2010

Degree 0.814 0.612 0.867
The United States is also privileged in the diplomatic system. Duque (2018) has
examined the global network of embassies in the greatest detail. She argues that states
are status-seeking, and that the embassy network is one way that states pursue interna-
tional status. She uses inferential network models, discussed below, to show that
endogenous network processes (including a preferential attachment effect) are a major
determinant of the evolution of the embassy network over time, while material capabili-
ties are far less determinative.38 Duque links this to the maintenance of international
order, which also appears to be hegemonic in this domain: the United States receives the
most embassies, thus indicating its high diplomatic status, and this prominence has
grown over time.39
The United States’ ability to institutionalize security relations has increased the dura-
bility of the American order despite significant changes in International Relations, and
the distribution of material resources, over the past seven decades. The success of this
order had made it more attractive for others to join US-led institutions and practices,
which is part of the process that the FPA model seeks to understand. This leaves the
United States in a unique position to manage future changes to the system including,
perhaps, a rise in cyber warfare, unmanned conflict, or other high-technology areas.
While these may not represent existential threats at present (Valeriano and Maness,
2015), there is a great likelihood that their salience will increase in the coming years. If
so, the United States is better positioned than other states to adjust to these develop-
ments, as it is able to draw not only from its vast material capabilities but also its deep
embeddedness within the broader global security structure.
The structure of knowledge

Knowledge is power, and whoever is able to develop or acquire a kind of knowledge that is
sought by others, and whoever can control the channels by which it is communicated and the
access to stores of knowledge, is able to dominate. In past times, priests and sages often
exercised such dominance over kings and generals. The jealousy with which priesthoods
guarded their knowledge and restricted access to it has been a common feature of all great
religions. Today, the knowledge most sought after by those who pursue power or wealth,
military or corporate leadership, is technology (Strange, 1987: 569–70).
Structural position within the subsystem of knowledge—Strange’s fourth aspect of

structural power—is more difficult to macroempirically ascertain. Knowledge is some-
thing of a latent quantity, it can diffuse quite quickly, and these flows often cannot be
precisely measured. Moreover, the same knowledge can be possessed by everyone
simultaneously; it is not an excludable good. Strange was less concerned with all knowl-
edge than with the ability to create and mobilize technology of new materials, processes,
products, and systems. This idea is better described by the contemporary concept of
human capital, but since Strange’s time of writing others have also emphasized the
importance of norms and cultural influence (e.g. “soft power”) as major drivers of inter-
national outcomes, often drawing from Gramscian conceptualizations of hegemony as an
ideational force.40
Human capital is also somewhat slippery in meaning, but some basic illustrative facts
indicate that the United States is well-positioned to stay at the core of human capital
structures in the 21st century. The American university system remains the world’s most
prestigious, and it supports the American political, economic, and social systems in many
respects.41 Far more foreigners apply to American universities than any other, and the
fact that the United States educates many foreigners who become elites in their home
countries provides a mechanism for spreading American norms globally.42 This system
supports growth industries in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and elsewhere; it provides a
strong suite of skilled researchers with substantial resources to maintain the United
States’ leadership in scientific and technical fields. Indeed, the American university
Winecoff 239
system is increasingly emulated globally,43 and the United States remains the primary
destination for the world’s top research scientists (Appelt et al., 2015). The World Bank’s
Human Capital Index rates the United States and its core partners highest in the world,
while emerging powers like China still lag behind.44
We could try infer American leadership from other facts, such as US dominance of
Nobel Prizes and scientific citation counts (Pan et al., 2012). Or we could look to the
revealed preferences of the knowledgable: applications for H1B “skilled worker” visas
and admittance into US universities remain very high. If data of sufficient quality existed,
we could plot complete flows of skilled and unskilled workers, or visa applications; this
would provide some indication of where the returns to human skill are highest. The met-
rics that we do have suggest that the United States is at the top of the list, whereas its
geopolitical rivals struggle: in a recent poll almost half of wealthy Chinese wished to
emigrate, with the United States and Europe the preferred destinations.45 According to
Gallup’s World Poll, over 20% of the 750 million people who wish to permanently emi-
grate from their home countries choose the United States as their top destination, and this
percentage is stable over time (even following the election of Donald Trump to the presi-
dency), while no other country achieves double-digits.46
Strange emphasized intellectual control over technologies, of which a key component
is intellectual property rights. Other recent scholarship has also linked control over these
systems to American structural power, noting in particular the high-tech–finance nexus
(Schwartz, 2019). Here, US centrality in the monetary and financial subsystems provides
its other economic sectors with the financial capital needed to develop new products and
technologies, and to invest abroad in leading sectors. More generally, intellectual prop-
erty protections—which the United States and Europe have pushed throughout the global
economy via trade and investment agreements—help American firms retain high profit-
ability, which allows them to reinvest into research and development in new growth
sectors. The ties between American high-tech firms and the US armed forces are also
strong, which provides a security benefit to high human capital formation.
Figure 7 shows the development of the foreign patent filing system from 1990 to
2016. The United States began that series with the highest eigenvector centrality score,
and the second-highest betweenness centrality (behind the Soviet Union). Over that time,
several countries have gained on one or both dimensions, most notably China, but the
United States’ relative advantage has grown. In terms of betweenness centrality, it is the
clear global leader, while China has risen to match the United States in eigenvector cen-
trality in the most recent period. Table 4 shows that a power-law is a reasonable fit for
both in-strength and out-strength in all years, thus providing further evidence in support
of the FPA model.
But the most significant evidence in favor of the United States’ advantage in knowl-
edge generation may come from the other subsystems. As one of the above quotes from
Strange notes, countries possess greater structural power when their workers wear white
collars and direct production, rather than wearing blue collars on assembly lines. The fact
that the United States retains prominence in value-added trade provides an indication, as
does its ownership of the world’s top firms, particularly multinational and transnational
corporations. These are the companies that are able to combine human and physical capi-
tal in the most productive ways to drive global growth and wealth accumulation. Even
Figure 7. The eigenvector and betweenness centrality of foreign patent filings. The data are
taken from the World Intellectual Property Organization’s database.
distributions of the WIPO patent data in Figure 7 and a power-law, where the null hypothesis
is that the distributions are the same. We clearly fail to reject the null hypothesis in all cases.
Thus, the power-law distribution is a plausible fit for this network.
1990 2000 2010 2016

In-Strength 0.995 0.986 0.919 0.377
Out-Strength 0.736 0.149 0.441 0.470
the rapid development of the high-technology sector in countries like China has much to
do with knowledge spillovers from multinational companies (MNCs) operating there,
many of which are American (Zhou, 2007). And while China’s influence is growing in
some sectors of the knowledge-intensive economy, this influence remains quite shallow
because of structural impediments to China’s integration into the core of the world’s
intellectual system (Shambaugh, 2013).
Winecoff 241
American structural power in the knowledge system also contains other, “softer,”
dimensions. The English language remains dominant in the global economy, which
reduces transactions costs for the Anglophone nations and embeds American culture into
international economic exchange (Selmier II and Oh, 2013). A recently created index of
cultural similarity finds that the United States is much closer to most countries than
potential rivals like China; in fact, by this measure even Hong Kong is more culturally
similar to the United States than it is to China (Muthukrishna et al., 2018). While this
may change over time as China continues to develop and pursue greater geopolitical and
economic connectivity, the entrenched advantage of the United States (and its allies) is
significant, and preferential attachment may go a long way toward keeping it there. After
all, once English is entrenched as a core business and academic language the incentives
for others to learn it are very strong.
Hegemonic (in)stability and power transition as dynamic

network processes
A far more plausible explanation for the erosion of so-called international regimes than the
decline in American hegemonic power lies within the American political system rather than in
the role of the United States in the international system. Stability in these regimes requires,
above all, some consistency on the part of the leading participant (Strange, 1987: 571–572).
The descriptive analysis of network centrality across the four domains of structural
power articulated by Susan Strange—finance, trade, security, and knowledge—is a first
step toward establishing a complex network framework for studying power and interde-
pendence in International Relations. In each domain the United States remains promi-
nent, if not dominant. I have argued that the “fitness plus preferential attachment” model
of complex network formation is useful for understanding the durability of American
hegemony, as operationalized in terms of network centrality. However, the evidence I
provide is incomplete: a K-S test of the degree distributions reveals similarity to a power-
law-like distribution consistent with the FPA model, but that is the most we can conclude
with certainty at this stage. A full testing of the FPA model will require the specification
of inferential statistical network models (such as those in the exponential random graph
model family) to uncover the determinants of growth and change in these networks. An
advantage of these models is that they allow for the simultaneous inclusion of variables
at the level of the node (i.e., “fitness” attributes like economic size and political institu-
tions), dyad (i.e., “relational” attributes that could be important for compellence and
deterrence), and system (i.e., “preferential attachment” and other structural network pro-
cesses). As such, these models—each of which would likely require a full paper of its
own—will allow us to more fully capture the contributions of fitness relative to prefer-
ential attachment, as well as other potential factors, in giving rise to the networks we
observe. Thus, if we accept that network prominence confers structural power, these
models allow us to uncover the generative power through which structural power is
obtained, maintained, and (potentially) lost over time.
Further work is also needed to be done to link structural prominence to outcomes of
interest so that we would know the extent to which structural position confers structural
power, and whether this power may reside at substrata of the network such as within
communities (which may or may not be defined geographically). While there is some
evidence that political leaders view their world in terms of network-building—for exam-
ple, the quote from Anne-Marie Slaughter that earlier in this article—it is not clear that
all do at all times. The current American president, for example, takes a different view of
the utility of structural prominence than prior administrations. Moreover, some countries
could be locally prominent and possess structural power within their communities, even
if they are less so globally. One example of this from the above analysis may include
France within the community of states, which have historically been tied by coloniza-
tion. A vitally important extension of this work is to uncover when and why states and
nonstate actors attempt to obtain network centrality, and how they use these positions to
influence others in world politics. And while the four subsystems I have briefly explored
were emphasized by Susan Strange, there may be other material or ideational subsystems
that are equally important.
Perhaps more fundamentally, future research should prioritize the simultaneous anal-
ysis of these subsystems in a holistic framework. It is surely the case that these networks
intersect and interact with each other in nontrivial ways. For example, how might devel-
opments in the security subsystem impact outcomes in the trading network? Is the
financial network the most fundamental of these, or are financial outcomes a by-product
of other developments? These questions, and many others like them, are critical for
understanding macroeconomic and macropolitical outcomes in an increasingly com-
plex international system. While some preliminary work has looked at the co-evolution
of networks in world politics,47 it is surely the case that much more work is needed in
this area. New methodologies for examining “multiplex” networks—networks with
more than one layer, sometimes called “networks of networks”—offer much promise
for International Relations scholars interested in exploring global structures and their
relationships to outcomes in world politics, both descriptively and inferentially.
Such scholarship may help us answer fundamental questions pertaining to system
(in)stability, structural transformation, and power transition. While previous genera-
tions of scholarship on hegemonic stability and balance of power have yielded (at best)
mixed results, this may be due to the fact that they were generally created through the
ontological lens of polarity. While useful in some respects, this approach ignores the
broader structures of interdependence from which structural power originates. A com-
plex network approach can thus help us resolve enduring puzzles in international poli-
tics as well as generating expectations for the future that are capable of being analyzed
in real time.
There are reasons to believe that the geopolitical advantages the United States has
enjoyed in the postwar era would not have obtained absent network prominence. Will
this continue? The “fitness with preferential attachment” model of network development
provides a theoretical reason to believe so, at least over the medium run. Once countries
move into a core position within a network structure this position is reinforced over time
through endogenous feedback, since connecting to the core country provides positive
externalities. For example, the prominence of American finance provide a market incen-
tive for foreign capital to become even more well-connected with the United States,
since the United States is well-connected globally. Because American corporations have
Winecoff 243
established production and trading networks around the world, it makes them more
attractive partners for foreign producers and retailers. And the success of American uni-
versities will be sustained as long as the best students and researchers wish to be located
there, which will be partially determined by the previous prominence of US schools.
Positive feedback can be very strong in complex networks.
In this way, a network approach yields a conclusion at odds with much conventional
wisdom: if emerging markets continue to pursue development by integrating into the
economic and political networks that the United States maintains, as the defeated Axis
powers did, then American prominence is likely to be further reinforced by their growth.
The dependence of Chinese trade on American and European consumption illustrates
this, as does the long-standing dependence of emerging markets on global capital mar-
kets particularly in New York and London, which provide US dollar liquidity across the
globe.
The downside to structural prominence is that others may feel threatened by increas-
ingly hierarchical patterns of interdependence and seek to resist exposure by forming
alternative clubs (Farrell and Newman, 2019). But repeated efforts to create alternatives
to the American-led system have as yet been unsuccessful. It is similarly unclear to what
extent countries can successfully pursue network prominence without a destruction of
the status quo networks. Over time network positions can be revised, but there are no
examples of a gradual displacement of the core by the periphery. Indeed, in the capitalist
era of history such transitions have occurred only following hegemonic wars and eco-
nomic collapses that destroyed the core power’s ability to stabilize the system. This sug-
gests that one important factor that conditions network positioning is the strength of the
endogenous processes that influence network formation over time. Barring events simi-
larly catastrophic to those that occurred from 1914–1945, in all of these subsystems, the
United States’ structural power is likely to persist. In the past this has usually occurred
following a revision of the fitness distribution that was substantial enough to swamp the
positive feedback processes. In the future, it could come from an intentional disruption
of global networks by the core states, through malintent and/or short-sightedness. Those
concerned about the long-run effect of the Trump presidency on the United States’ struc-
tural power thus have strong reason for concern.
So perhaps Anne-Marie Slaughter’s earlier admonition should be rephrased: the
United States possesses network prominence now. In the 21st century it should prioritize
good stewardship of it.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
ORCID iD
William Kindred Winecoff https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3415-537X
Supplemental material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
1. For example, Winecoff (2017b) cites the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed
exchange rates, and the expected decline of the United States as the hegemonic world eco-
nomic power, as the foundational moment for the creation of international political economy
as a distinctive subdiscipline. Keohane (1984) premised his famous theory of international
cooperation on the eventual erosion of American hegemony, which he argued was already
underway at the time of writing (while nevertheless reiterating that the United States remained
quite powerful). Others, e.g., Russett (1985), argued that such a moment was further away
than “declinists” believed.
2. See also Strange (1982, 1988a,c). Hart (1976) had earlier referred to power as “control over
events and outcomes” and linked that form of power to early graph theory of network struc-
tures (Hart, 1974). This article uses “relational” in the same dyadic sense as Strange, while
acknowledging that some other literature uses the term to more generally refer to interdepend-
ence in a dyadic or hyperdyadic context (Cranmer and Desmarais, 2016, e.g.).
3. The popularity of left-politics-oriented dependency and world systems theories also waned at
the so-called end of history (Fukuyama, 1989).
4. Strange said that her idea of structural power was “a framework of analysis” and a “toolkit,”
not a “general model or a general theory” (Trevino-Cantu, 2010, 15). Similar recollections
can be found in Tooze and May (2002) and another admirer referred to her approach as an
“organising framework, a heuristic typology in place of a theory” (Palan, 2003: 121).
5. For just a few recent examples of what Thompson (2013) called the “rise-and-fallology” genre,
see Cohen and DeLong (2010); Bremmer and Roubini (2011); Subramanian (2011b,a,c);
Layne (2012); Helleiner (2014); Kirshner (2014); Thompson (2018).
6. Ikenberry and Nexon (2019) refer to this as “Hegemony Studies 3.0.”
7. For example, Beckley (2018a) focuses on measurement of the power distribution, and finds
that the United States’ relative capabilities have not declined nearly so much as naive meas-
ures based on national aggregates (such as GDP) might suggest.
8. This intuition has been imported into International Relations previously. For example, Smith
et al. (2014) describes how network position may confer “political independence” in global
security networks. Hafner-Burton and Montgomery (2006, 2009, 2012) emphasize the ways
in which network prominence confers social influence that is somewhat portable across
domains, and not always in ways that promote cooperation. Carpenter (2011), Carpenter et al.
(2015), and Goddard (2009, 2018) emphasize brokerage roles in transnational advocacy net-
works and international order revisionism, respectively.
9. As such, network analysis allows us to not fall prey to the problems with much quantita-
tive International Relations research, whose statistical models typically assume observational
independence among the units under study. When there is meaningful interdependence the
use of such models will yield biased results (Cranmer and Desmarais, 2016).
10. When I propose endogenous structural processes as being meaningful in world politics, I do
not remove the role of human agency from the story. This is a common critique of network
analysis, sometimes with good reason (Wellman, 1988). But endogenous network processes
have clear analogs to behavioral trends that are central to International Relations. For exam-
ple, a preferential attachment process in security relations could occur due to bandwagoning
(Maoz, 2012b). In finance, it might relate to herding behaviors among investors. In multi-
national production, to the reproduction of a capitalist accumulation regime. The structural
analysis offered below provides a framework for assessing these—and other—questions in
a nonreductionist manner (Oatley, 2011). It may also be a prerequisite for assessing when
structural power matters, and what it matters for (Young, 2015).
Winecoff 245
11. See Oatley (2019) for a discussion of how modern complexity science could enrich IPE, in
part by refocusing on its attention on the concept of complex interdependence.
12. And perhaps the topology of International Relations across domains, as well. I return to the
concept of “multiplexity,” which can be thought of as “networks of networks.”
13. Early development of this idea in network science came from Barabási and Albert (1999).
The concept of preferential attachment was introduced to International Relations by Maoz
(2012b), who linked it to classic IR concepts such as bandwagoning (although he tested its
application in a non-network statistical model). It was first referenced in an international
political economy context by Oatley et al. (2013). A general proposition of the model for
International Relations, and empirical exploration of its plausibility as explanatory in world
politics, has been left until now.
14. This nonrandomness in link formation distinguishes complex network models, including
FPA, from random network models. In random network models the prior distribution of
links connecting nodes does not impact future link formation; in complex network models
it does.
15. Preferential attachment is similar to, although technically not the same as, “rich get richer”
or “Matthew effect” processes. It also shares a family resemblance to other well-known pro-
cesses in the social sciences such as path dependence, positive feedback, and scale econom-
ics. The FPA model allows us to specify a parameter to estimate the strength of this process,
without neglecting the characteristics of a unit that gives it fitness.
16. The appendix contains extensive evidence of more data that cannot exist in the main text due
to space restrictions.
17. A power law is defined such that Y = kXβ, meaning that quantity Y changes as a proportion to
changes in X by β, for any size k. A simple example is that of the area of a square: if we double
the length of a square’s side then its area always increases by a factor of four, regardless of
how large the square was to begin with. The insensitivity of size is what gives these networks
the name “scale-free.”
18. I return to this question in the concluding section.
19. Norrlof and Wohlforth (2016) show that US military expenditure does not lead to fiscal over-
extension; this is almost certainly due to the United States’ ability to issue “risk-less” sover-
eign debt into global capital markets, and this unique ability is closely tied to its dominance
within the monetary system.
20. I discuss the literature on the monetary system, and provide data pertaining to it, in the supple-
mental appendix. It is probably not surprising to most readers that the international monetary
system remains organized around the dollar (Cohen and Benney, 2014; Gopinath, 2016). Yet
the reasons why this is the case are not clear. Dollar dominance exists to a far greater degree
than would be expected from a focus on domestic-level attributes—i.e., “fitness”—alone. In
the appendix I provide some evidence that the FPA model may also apply to that system.
21. Graphs of these distributions are in the appendix. These measures are used in the K-S test not
only to provide an alternative set of measures, but because the K-S test is most straightfor-
ward when using degree-based measured such as in- and out-strength.
22. This literature is enormous. Just a few examples, not including those already cited above:
Cohen (1977, 2004, 2012); Eichengreen (2011).
23. Although Beckley (2018a) persuasively argues that using GDP as a measure of economic
capability is overly simplistic.
24. In fact, greater international RMB usage will not necessarily shift network prominence away
from the US dollar, particularly if the dollar remains (as it is now) one of the primary coun-
terparties to the RMB trade.
25. These data are perhaps of insufficient quality to make very-fine inferences (Linsi and Mügge,
2019), but they remain useful for getting a general comparative sense of what has happened
over time.
26. To the extent that China’s growth has come at the expense of others, the following countries
fell in absolute export value-added degree strength from 2008-2015: Germany, Japan, Italy,
Russia, France, Korea, Netherlands, and other developing countries in the “Rest of the World”
category.
27. The degree distributions of these data are shown in the appendix, as are the graphs of the
change in countries’ in-strength and out-strength, of the global trade-in-value-added networks
described later. China has also grown as an importer, as have other developing economies,
while “Old Core” economies such as those in Europe and East Asia have mostly remained the
same.
28. As the authors put it (p. 115): “The presence of such dependence implies misspecification and
a high likelihood of bias in most current applications.” In other words, studies of trade that do
not take account of endogenous structural processes contained in the network are untrustwor-
thy, as they are biased in an unknown direction.
29. A statistical model that emphasizes unit-level attributes would have difficulty explaining the
prominence of the United States, China, Germany, and Japan anyway, as the four countries
differ markedly on most historical, cultural, political, demographic, and social dimensions.
30. Garcia-Algarra et al. (2019) also find substantial support for preferential attachment as a key
mechanism for the development of the world trade system.
31. Goldman Sachs alone controls more than 4,000 corporate entities: http://goo.gl/iqkRg4.
32. Defense Manpower Data Center report, year-end 2018: https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/
dwp_reports.jsp, accessed January 13, 2020.
33. This network has changed very little over time, so I plot the most recent single year available.
34. Others may also be important, in specific ways. For example, even though it is lowly-ranked
in terms of eigenvector centrality, France provides a bridge to some countries (especially in
Africa) with which it has a colonial history, and which others in the network might not other-
wise be able to reach.
35. This suggests a need to think about conflict outside of the context of the dyad or triad (particu-
larly if those are treated as independent and identically distributed observations, as they are
in all regression models): the international system, defined in terms of structural interdepend-
ence and measured using network analysis, should be moved out of the error term (Gartzke,
1999). When we do this we find that a highly interdependent and hierarchical world can be a
more peaceful world (Cranmer et al., 2015).
36. The data can be found at http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/national-material-capabil-
ities, last accessed January 13, 2020.
37. Kinne and Bunte (2020) find that DCAs coevolve with bilateral lending networks, suggesting
that the former leads to cooperative security communities while the latter represent hierarchi-
cal relations.
38. Duque also finds that ideational considerations—especially maintenance of democracy and
human rights—are important. This provides some indication of the ideational prominence
of the United States and its core allies as well, particularly by contrast with its more likely
geopolitical rivals. I briefly discuss the role of ideas in the next section. Kinne (2014) also
performs a network analysis of diplomatic relations, and he too finds very powerful endog-
enous network processes at work.
39. I provide network statistics on the embassy network in the supplemental appendix. The
United States has the highest position in both eigenvector and betweenness centrality.
40. Gill and Law (1989) linked this to the transnational regime of capitalist accumulation that
Starrs (and others) empirically explore in references above. For example, Slobodian (2018)
Winecoff 247
argues that neoliberalism is a decades-long process of establishing a globalist hegemonic

ideology that reproduces and extends capitalism. In both accounts American ideas intersects
with material capabilities to express power in the international system. For the purposes of
this paper I accept these accounts.
41. Cole (2012).
42. Chwieroth (2007) provides one account.
43. shorturl.at/biY38, accessed January 13, 2020.
44. http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/human-capital, 13 January2020.
45. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-09-15/almost-half-of-chinas-rich-want-to-emi-
grate, accessed January 13, 2020.
46. https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx, accessed January
13, 2020. China and the other BRICS are each selected by about 1% of those who report they
would like to permanently relocate. After the United States, the next top choices are all either
Anglophone (Canada, Australia) or European, excepting Saudi Arabia (chosen by 3%).
47. Kinne and Bunte (2020) examine defense cooperation agreements and state-to-state bilateral
lending as co-evolving networks.
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952876

25th Anniversary Special Issue

“The persistent myth of

William Kindred Winecoff

Structural power and world politics

Slaughter’s claim relies on intuition that is common to International Relations theory

Structural power and complex networks

GDPgrowth = Trade+ DomesticInputs. (1)

yit = α 0 + β1 xit + β 2 gt yit + β 3 gt xit + ε it (2)

Structural power and the FPA model

Assessing the FPA model for structural power in world

The structure of global finance

2005 2009 2015

eventually successful, it may represent less of a structural challenge than an integration

The structure of production and trade

The structure of security

1990 2000 2010

The structure of knowledge

Structural position within the subsystem of knowledge—Strange’s fourth aspect of

1990 2000 2010 2016

Hegemonic (in)stability and power transition as dynamic

argues that neoliberalism is a decades-long process of establishing a globalist hegemonic

Subramanian A (2011a) Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance.

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