Research On Susan Strange’s Theory Of Structural Power

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the arrival of the post-Cold War era, the United States has become the sole superpower in the world, which makes the possibility of the outbreak of large-scale wars greatly reduced. As a result of that, people are now increasingly focused on the non-security factors such as trade, finance, money and knowledge. Against the background, Susan Strange, who was famous in British international political studies, proposed theory of structural power, which received general concern of many scholars in international relations studies.Strange defined the power in international relations as relational power and structural power, and the latter is the focus of her study, which includes four basic structure of safety, production, finance and knowledge, four secondary structure of transport, trade, energy and benefits. The paper researches from illustrating the core parts of structural power. Foremost, section one explores the basic values and the research methods of the theory, compares relational power with structural power, and comments the basic structure and the secondary structure of the structural power.Meanwhile, section two compares theory of structural power with other relevant theory of international relations on power and structure. On the one hand, the paper, in terms of power, compares structural power with the power of classical realism and soft power. On the other hand, the paper, in terms of structure, compares structural power with structural realism, neo-liberal institutionalism and constructivism.In addition, the third section tries to analyze today’s most compelling topics, which are the rise of China and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, by theory of structural power, so as to apply the theory to practice. The paper, by analyzing the rise of China, concludes that the power gap between China and the United States is still very obvious, which forces China to try her best to integrate into the international system established by America and the leading members of developed nations. Furthermore, the enlightenment of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is China must create her own theory of political economics, which suits her own laws of historical development, strengthen the basis of the real economy, and coordinate the fiscal policy and monetary policy of the central and the local.