Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:30:44.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction to the symposium. The concept of protean power: change we can believe in?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2020

Jacques E. C. Hymans Open the ORCID record for Jacques E. C. Hymans [Opens in a new window]
Jacques E. C. Hymans*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This introductory article to the symposium first presents and then critiques the protean power concept of the Katzenstein and Seybert volume. Although the volume underestimates the value of rational choice models to explain some cases of protean power, it rightly demonstrates that our conventional theoretical toolkit insufficiently anticipates many such disruptions. Drawing on the examples of post-World War I veterans' movements and India's 1998 decision to test nuclear weapons, I argue that the protean power research agenda should focus on the reciprocal relationship between radical uncertainty and psychological and behavioral rigidity.

Keywords

protean powerpolitical psychologyagile actorsrigid actorsveterans' movementsnuclear weapons
Type
Symposium: Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics: Edited by Jacques E. C. Hymans
Information
International Theory , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2020 , pp. 410 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

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

References

Adler, Emanuel. 2020. “Control Power as a Special Case of Protean Power: Thoughts on Peter Katzenstein and Lucia Seybert's Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics.” International Theory 12 (3): 422–434.Google Scholar
Arrow, Kenneth. 1951 [1963]. Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Bates, Robert H. 2008. When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brigden, Noelle K., and Peter, Andreas. 2018. “Border Collision: Power Dynamics of Enforcement and Evasion across the US–Mexico Line.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 100–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chengappa, Raj. 2000. Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India's Quest to Be a Nuclear Power. New Delhi: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Cohen, Michael D. 2017. When Proliferation Causes Peace: The Psychology of Nuclear Crises. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
DeMartino, George, and Grabel, Ilene. 2020. “Irreparable Ignorance, Protean Power and Economics.” International Theory 12 (3): 435–448.Google Scholar
Fuhrmann, Matthew, and Horowitz, Michael C.. 2015. “When Leaders Matter: Rebel Experience and Nuclear Proliferation.” Journal of Politics 77 (1): 72–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerring, John. 1999. ‘What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences.’ Polity 31 (3): 357–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guzzini, Stefano. 2020. “Protean Power as a Plea for an Open Social Ontology, Non-Efficient Causal Explanations and Cautious Political Practice.” International Theory 12 (3): 449–458.Google Scholar
Hardin, Russell. 2003. Indeterminacy and Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hironaka, Ann. 2017. Tokens of Power: Rethinking War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopf, Ted. 2010. “The Logic of Habit in International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 16 (4): 539–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymans, Jacques E. C. 2006. The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J. ed. 1996. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A.. eds. 2018a. Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Seybert, Lucia A.. 2018b. “Preface.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., xi–xviii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Seybert, Lucia A.. 2018c. “Uncertainty, Risk, Power and the Limits of International Relations Theory.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 27–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Seybert, Lucia A.. 2018d. “Power Complexities and Political Theory.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 267–301. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, Barak. 2018. “Terrorism and Protean Power: How Terrorists Navigate Uncertainty.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 188–208. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosse, George L. 1990. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pelopidas, Benoît. 2020. “Power, Luck, and Scholarly Responsibility at the End of the World(s).” International Theory 12 (3): 459–470.Google Scholar
Prost, Antoine. 1992. In the Wake of War: ‘Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society 1914–1939, Translated by Helen McPhail. Providence, RI: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1988. Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Seybert, Lucia A., and Katzenstein, Peter J.. 2018. “Protean Power and Control Power: Conceptual Analysis.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 3–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seybert, Lucia A., Nelson, Stephen C., and Katzenstein, Peter J.. 2018. “Slumdog versus Superman: Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Circulation of Power in the Global Film Industry.” In Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J. and Seybert, Lucia A., 209–25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zürn, Michael. 2020. “Unknown Effects of Social Innovations.” International Theory 12 (3): 471–480.Google Scholar