Grand Strategy and Technological Futures

2021 ◽  
pp. 705-720
Author(s):  
Robert G. Cantelmo ◽  
Sarah E. Kreps
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Change ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Technical Innovation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Returns On Investment ◽  
Benefit And Risk

How do we understand the consequences of technical innovation for grand strategy? We argue that technology has an indirect, but significant impact on how states formulate and implement strategic priorities. This process of updating is dynamic and iterative as grand-strategic change is incremental rather than a wholesale abandonment of the status quo. New capabilities may produce shifts to state cost, benefit, and risk considerations and produce a corresponding adjustment to grand strategy. Technological innovation may also serve as an intermediate end unto itself. State confidence in positive returns on investment in research and development will produce a corresponding emphasis on innovation as a matter of national policy. We evaluate these claims by applying them to three new and emerging technical innovations: precision-guided munitions, robotic autonomy, and computing.

Grand Strategy and the Challenge of Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 522-538
Author(s):  
William D. James
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Change ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Measuring Change ◽  
The Status ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

Why do some states persist with grand strategies that have become excessively burdensome? Generations of great powers have become overstretched by squandering resources in areas of peripheral importance, instead of cutting their losses and focusing on core interests. This chapter explores the incentives, barriers, and enablers of grand-strategic change. It first offers a definition of grand strategy, before outlining a two-tiered framework for measuring change. The chapter then examines the structural incentives for altering a state’ grand strategy, as well as the psychological, cultural, organizational, and domestic impediments. Short of a catastrophic strategic shock, grand-strategic change is rare. It is possible, however, given the right systemic conditions, as well as the presence of change agents and a viable alternative to the status quo.

Deterrence and Foreign Policy

1989 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander L. George ◽  
Richard Smoke
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Status ◽  
Positive Inducements ◽  
Deductive Theory ◽  
Different Levels

Achen and Snidal's deductive theory of deterrence contributes very little to an understanding of the uses and limitations of deterrence strategy as an instrument of foreign policy. Lacking operationalization, their “rational deterrence theory” is incapable of predicting the outcome of individual cases. Furthermore, it has not yet addressed the need (i) to reconceptualize the problem of deterrence for different levels of conflict; (2) to refine the assumption of “rationality”; (3) to deal with the phenomenon of equifinality; (4) to develop a framework of strategic interaction between Initiator and Defender acknowledging that an Initiator often has multiple options for challenging the status quo from which to choose an action that meets his cost-benefit criteria; (5) to find a way of taking into account decision-making variables that, as case studies have demonstrated, often affect deterrence outcomes; and (6) to broaden the conceptualization of deterrence strategy to encompass the possible use of positive inducements as a means of discouraging challenges to a status quo situation.

Resilience in social and economic systems: a concept that fails the cost–benefit test?

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK HANLEY
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Ecological Concept ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cost

One of the first lessons that students of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) learn is to ask whether projects or policies which they are studying generate additional benefits or costs, relative to the status quo. They are also told to be very careful in defining the project/policy which is the subject of their analysis. In my view, the ecological concept of resilience fails the CBA test, when applied to the study of economic and social systems, because it offers no additional insights to those we have already, and appears to be poorly defined.

Motivated to change? TMT regulatory focus and strategic change

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 803-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip T. Roundy ◽  
Ye Dai ◽  
Mark A. Bayer ◽  
Gukdo Byun
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Focus ◽  
Strategic Change ◽  
Deep Level ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Psychological Determinants ◽  
Top Managers ◽  
The Status

Purpose This paper aims to introduce the concept of top management team (TMT) regulatory focus to explain the differences in executive motivation. Upper echelons research has demonstrated that top managers’ willingness to deviate from their current strategies is a key determinant of organizational success. However, it is not clear why some TMTs are motivated to embrace strategic change while others are motivated to favor the strategic status quo. Design/methodology/approach Recent work in the psychology of motivation is used to develop a conceptual model explaining how the regulatory focus of TMTs can impact their outlooks toward strategic change. Findings It is theorized that there is a positive (negative) relationship between promotion (prevention)-focused TMTs and strategic change. It is also theorized that executives’ performance aspirations, firm maturity and the stability of the environment will influence the relationship between regulatory focus and strategic change. Originality/value Although the theoretical explanations provided by past research on top manager motivation are psychological in their general focus, with few exceptions research has not sought to understand the specific deep-level, socio-cognitive characteristics that shape executives’ perceptions of strategic change. By developing an understanding of the psychological determinants of strategic change, as well as the interplay between these determinants and firm- and environment-level factors, this paper represents a step in the direction of explaining why some TMTs are motivated to embrace strategic change while others seem “locked-in” to the status quo.

scholarly journals Motivating Citizens to Participate in Public Policymaking: Identification, Trust and Cost-Benefit Analyses

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Antonini ◽  
Michael A. Hogg ◽  
Lucia Mannetti ◽  
Barbara Barbieri ◽  
Joseph A. Wagoner
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Interactive Effect ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Pathway Model ◽  
State Identification ◽  
The Status ◽  
Dual Pathway ◽  
Motivation To Participate

Under what conditions do citizens of nations and states comply with governmental requests to participate in public policymaking? Drawing on the dual pathway model of collective action (Stürmer & Simon, 2004) but with a focus on compliance with the status quo, rather than participation in collective protest, two studies examined citizens’ motivation to participate in public policymaking. Study 1 (N = 169) was an MTurk hosted survey that recruited participants from California, while Study 2 (N = 198) was a field experiment that recruited participants in Sardinia, Italy. Study 1 measured cost-benefit analyses, societal identification, and willingness to participate in public policymaking. Study 2 repeated the same procedures, with the exception that we manipulated costs of participation, and also measured participants’ trust in government. Study 1 confirmed our initial hypotheses – fewer costs predicted more willingness to participate, as did stronger state identification. However, Study 2 found an interactive effect of costs, identification, and trust on willingness to participate in public policymaking. Results confirm our hypotheses by showing that both costs and identification independently influence willingness to participate in public policymaking. Results also add to the literature by showing that these additive pathways can be influenced by trust in the source of governance.

Grand Strategy in a Fractured Marketplace of Ideas

2021 ◽  
pp. 656-672
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Drezner
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Marketplace Of Ideas ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Policy Elites

In theory, grand strategies should benefit from a robust marketplace of foreign policy ideas, in which experts can critique and improve upon the status quo. There is growing evidence, however, that in practice this marketplace has shifted in ways that make the sustainable articulation of grand strategies more difficult. This chapter reviews these shifts and considers how they weaken the ability of foreign policy elites to influence grand strategy. The erosion of trust in expertise, increase in political polarization, and weakening of legislative interest in grand strategy have degraded the ability of experts to proffer new ideas and critique alternatives. These trends ensure that the lifespan of each grand strategy has been shortened, reducing their utility.

Not Quite the Same as It Ever Was

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Wohlforth
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Peer Status ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
The Status ◽  
Dominant State ◽  
Hegemonic Transition

The chapter addresses the claim that rising powers will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the current order and establish new rules using the classical Gilpinian framework as well as more recent rise-and-decline scholarship. It argues against this view and points to a more nuanced position: a harder-to-manage world has arrived, but the essential structural imperatives that have operated for twenty years are likely to remain. The chapter grounds this argument in the near certainty that all-out systemic war is off the table as a mechanism for hegemonic transition; the fact that the rising challenger to the system’s dominant state is approaching peer status on only one dimension of state capability, gross economic output; and the historically unprecedented degree of institutionalization in world politics coupled with the central role institutions play in the dominant power’s grand strategy. Each change favors the status quo states and makes revisionism harder.

Persuasion and Economic Efficiency: The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Banning Abortion

1993 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julianne Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Pareto Improvement ◽  
Net Benefit ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost

How do economists persuade their readers that one policy is superior to another? A glance at the literature on welfare economics quickly provides the answer to this question: Economists enter policy debates armed with mathematical models, evaluating options on the basis of their consequences. Economists typically classify a policy change as a welfare (or “potential Pareto”) improvement with respect to the status quo if the gain realized by the winners exceeds the harm sustained by the losers. The best policy becomes the one that generates the highest net benefit.

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