Crafting Payoffs: Strategies and Effectiveness of Economic Statecraft

About

Speaker: Audrye Wong, Grand Strategy, Security, & Statecraft Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program

Economic statecraft — the use of economic tools to pursue political goals — is an important foreign policy strategy for many major powers and has been an increasingly important tool for China. The speaker will provide a theoretical framework to explain the effectiveness of economic statecraft, focusing on positive inducements, which have been relatively understudied. She will argue that effectiveness is influenced by the interaction between two variables: (a) the type of inducement strategy; and (b) the level of public accountability in the target country.

To analyze the varying effectiveness of China's economic statecraft, she adopts adopt a multi-method approach, drawing on evidence from field interviews in seven countries across the Asia-Pacific, case studies, and a survey experiment. Her findings have important theoretical and policy implications for understanding the conditions under which great powers can use economic capabilities in pursuit of security goals and geopolitical influence — and for better understanding China's foreign policy strategies and the strategic impacts of its overseas economic activities.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Contact

For more information, email the International Security Program Assistant at susan_lynch@harvard.edu.