This talk will give an overview of a new book manuscript, The Dynamics of Power Politics (with Paul MacDonald and Daniel Nexon), which develops a relational-network approach to power political mobilization. Much of international relations theories assume that states have access to “stocks” of power, that military, economic, and diplomatic tools are readily available and ready to deploy in power-political competition. Instead, we argue that scholars should orient their analysis of great power competition around processes of collective mobilization and demobilization, with the goal of identifying the strategies of mobilization that replicate across time and space.

About the speaker

Stacie Goddard has been named director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia SIPA and will hold the Arnold A. Saltzman Professorship starting in July 2026.

Goddard served as the Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost for Wellesley in the World at Wellesley College, where she has taught since 2005. Her research and teaching focus on great power competition, with particular attention to the global politics of legitimacy and revisionist powers. She is also a Faculty Affiliate with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and formerly served as faculty director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies