Short Course: Protean and Control Power in Interaction

shortcourse_sc19Protean and Control Power in Interaction

Peter Katzenstein

9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Great transformations in world politics are often signaled by unanticipated events, novel trends and intractable challenges that leave politicians, pundits and scholars frequently surprised, even stunned. We propose a workshop even that will inquire into the productive and nefarious side of innovation as a mechanism of power in generating transformative change. Such change, we claim, is shaped by the interaction between protean and control power and practices of innovation, acquiescence and resistance that the interaction of the two types of power generates. The contributors explore a wide range of areas, stretching from finance to energy and from terrorism to arms control. Rather than focusing exclusively on efforts to control transformative change we will underline the importance of protean power, as means of working with, rather than against deep-seated uncertainty. The meeting will highlight the importance of decentralized protean power that draws on and further fuels the evolving agility of actors, in processes of transformative change marked by great uncertainty. Protean power interacts with more centralized control power, applied in situations of calculable risk that causes outcomes actors deem desirable, through coercion, institutions and structures. In a risky but predictable world, realists focus on processes of rebalancing, liberals on processes of diffusion. The interaction between protean and control power can elicit responses ranging from acquiescence and resistance to innovation, all of which come into play in situations of transformative change.

**All Short Courses will take place on Wednesday, August 31 at the APSA 2016 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.