Protean power: exploring the uncertain and unexpected in world politics

Extract

This edited volume makes a significant contribution to theories of power and International Relations by pioneering the notion of ‘protean power’. It defines protean power as an actor's agility when adapting to situations of uncertainty. Equipped with the notion of protean power, IR scholars will be better able to understand how uncertainty, and the creative and improvised response of actors to uncertainty, shape world politics.

Peter J. Katzenstein and Lucia A. Seybert introduce the concept of protean power by contrasting it with forms of power that are exerted through control—naming this ‘control power’. Control power results from the ability to control other actors through coercive, institutional or discursive influence; protean power is instead produced by agile actors who cope with uncertainty by improvising and innovating. Whereas control power operates within the realm of probabilistic risk, the world of clocks or ‘known unknowns’, protean power operates within the realm of incalculable uncertainty, the world of clouds or ‘unknown unknowns’ (p. 18). Seybert and Katzenstein employ a well-chosen metaphor to demonstrate this crucial difference: while control power operates in a closed system and resembles a marching band, protean power applies in an open system and has more in common with jazz.