Susan Strange | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Susan Strange in 1980 | |
| Born | (1923-06-09)9 June 1923 Langton Matravers,Dorset, England, UK |
| Died | 25 October 1998(1998-10-25) (aged 75) Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, UK |
| Family | Louis Strange (father) |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | London School of Economics |
| Philosophical work | |
| School | International political economy |
| Institutions | University of Warwick European University Institute London School of Economics Chatham House |
| Main interests | International relations,finance,economic history,power,macroeconomics |
| Notable ideas | International political economy, structural power, Westfailure, casino capitalism |
Susan Strange (9 June 1923 – 25 October 1998) was a British political economist, author, and journalist who was a pioneer ofinternational political economy (IPE). Notable publications includeSterling and British Policy (1971),Casino Capitalism (1986),States and Markets (1988),The Retreat of the State (1996), andMad Money (1998). She helped create theBritish International Studies Association (BISA). She was the first woman to hold theMontague Burton Professor of International Relations at theLondon School of Economics (LSE), the first female academic to have a professorship named after her at the LSE, and was honoured with several annual awards named after her.
Susan Strange was born on 9 June 1923 inLangton Matravers, in the county ofDorset, the daughter of English aviatorLouis Strange.[1] She went to theRoyal High School, Bath, and to theUniversity of Caen in France,[2] and graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from the LSE during the Second World War.[3] LikeRobert W. Cox, the other founder of British IPE, she never obtained aPhD.[4]
Strange earned a first in economics at the LSE in 1943.[5] She raised six children and worked as a financial journalist forThe Economist and thenThe Observer until 1957. AtThe Observer, she became the youngest White House correspondent of her time.[5] She began lecturing on International Politics at the University College London in 1949.[5]
In 1964, Strange became a full-time researcher atChatham House (formally the Royal Institute of International Affairs).[6] At Chatham House, she authoredSterling and British Policy (1971).[7] She set up an influential research group on IPE at Chatham House in 1971.[5] She played a role in the establishing of the journalReview of International Political Economy, which is the leading journal dedicated to IPE.[5]
From 1978 to 1988, Strange served as the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at LSE,[8] and was the first woman at LSE to hold this chair and professorship. At the LSE, she built Britain's first graduate program in IPE.[5] While at LSE, she held Visiting Professorships at theBrookings Institution, theUniversity of Minnesota, theUniversity of California,Columbia University, and theBologna Center ofJohns Hopkins University’sSchool of Advanced International Studies.[1]
Strange served as professor of international political economy at theEuropean University Institute inFlorence, Italy, from 1989 to 1993. Strange's final academic post, which she held from 1993 until her death in 1998, was as chair of International Relations and professor of IPE at theUniversity of Warwick, where she built up the graduate programme in IPE.[9] She also taught in Japan, where between 1993 and 1996 she was several times guest lecturer atAoyama Gakuin University inTokyo.[10]
Strange was a major figure in the professional associations in both Britain and the United States. She was an instrumental founding member and the first treasurer of the BISA,[5] and served as the third female president of theInternational Studies Association (ISA) in 1995.[11] Her only autobiographical essay, "I Never Meant to Be an Academic", was republished online in 2020 and includes stories from her early life to the 1970s.[12]
Strange was an influential thinker on global affairs.[13] She played a central role in developing IPE as a field of study,[14] and is a key figure inpolitical economy approaches tosecurity studies.[15] Her 1970 article, "International Economics and International Relations: A Case of Mutual Neglect", laid out her arguments for the need of a discipline of IPE.[5] Strange argued that power was central to international political economy.[16] She observed that in general "economists simply do not understand how the global political economy works" due to a poor understanding of power and an over-reliance on abstract economic models; however, she added that political scientists also have a woeful understanding of how the world works due to their emphasis on institutions and power. Thus she became one of the earliest campaigners advocating the necessity of studying both politics and economics forinternational relations scholars.[8] She influenced scholars such asRobert Gilpin.[17] She was a critic ofregime theory, arguing that the scholarship on regimes was too state-centric and carried a hidden bias in favor of maintaining US hegemony.[18]
In the 1980s, Strange disagreed with claims by other international studies scholars that US hegemony was on the decline.[19] She was skeptical of static indicators of power, arguing that it was structural power that mattered.[20] In particular, interactions between states and markets mattered.[21] She pointed to the superiority of the American technology sector, dominance in services, and the position of the US dollar as the top international currency as real indicators of lasting power.[22] She also disagreed with the attempt of economists led byMilton Friedman to mimic the natural sciences, which she thought was both dangerous and misplaced.[23]
Strange's key contribution to IPE was on the issue ofpower, which she considered essential to the character and dynamics of the global economy.[5] She distinguished between relational power (the power to compel A to get B to do something B does not want to do) and structural power (the power to shape and determine the structure of the global political economy).[24] Her works were generally successfully and were republished in subsequent years.[23]States and Markets (Pinter, 1988) delineated four key forms of power—security, production, finance, and knowledge; power was described as the ability to "provide protection, make things, obtain access to credit, and develop and control authoritative modes of interpreting the world".[25] Strange posited that the most overlooked channel of power is financial access, which consequently becomes the most important one to comprehend; in other words, she argued that one cannot comprehend how the world works without a thorough understanding of international financial markets.[25]
To illustrate,Casino Capitalism (B. Blackwell, 1986) discussed the dangers of the international financial system, which she considered confirmed by the1997 Asian financial crisis. According to Strange, there is a financial "contagion" creating a huge instability in the international financial markets.[26] Her analysis inStates and Markets also focused on what she called the "market-authority nexus", the see-saw of power between the market and political authority. She maintained that the global market, relative to the nation state, had gained significant power since the 1970s and that a "dangerous gap" was emerging between the two. She considered nation states inflexible, limited by territorial boundaries in a world of fragile intergovernmental co-operation; "Westfailure" is what she calledWestphalia. Markets would be able to flout regulations and reign free, creating more uncertainty and risk in an already chaotic environment.[27]
InCasino Capitalism (B. Blackwell, 1986), also republished byManchester University Press, Strange problemized the nonsystem that the international monetary system had become. In popularising the concept of casino capitalism,[28] she compared it with a casino whereon the foreign exchange plays assnakes and ladders. She set the stakes that international finance had become stronger than states and deregularised. TheSmithsonian Agreement was weakened, leading further to benign neglect from the US, while theEurodollar market andOPEC strongly undermined theBretton Woods system. According to Strange, there is no state or actor governing the international monetary system and the international financial markets. American banks are made free to pursue their interests since the 1980s strengthened by the possibility to finance American bonds in the world, making a carousel of bond trading with the OPEC and the Eurodollar market. The forces of market integration set by the Bretton Woods system was going through.[29]
Casino capitalism is the high risk-taking and financial instability associated withfinancial institutions becoming very large and mostly self-regulated, while also taking on high-risk financialinvestment dealings.[30] This has been a driving motive by investors in the quest forprofits withoutproduction; it provides aspeculation aspect that offers prospects for a quicker and more speculator returns for people,wealth, and inside assumptions of the factors likely to affectasset price movements.[31] Typically, this does not add to the collective wealth of aneconomy, as it can instead create economic instability.[31] Popularised by Strange in 1986 through her eponymous book,[28] casino capitalism falls alongside the idea of a speculation-based economy whereentrepreneurial activities turn to more paper games of speculativetrading than actually producing economicgoods andservices. It is believed by economists such asFrank Stilwell that casino capitalism was one of the leading causes of the2008 financial crisis. Investors sought out a get-rich-quick motive they found through speculative activities that offered a particular individual gain or loss depending on the assets' future movements.[32] Other economists likeHans-Werner Sinn have written about casino capitalism with commentary outside the Anglo-Saxonfinancial bubble.[33]
InRival States, Rival Firms (1991, Cambridge University Press), Strange discussed the structural change in international production and its related implications for developing countries.[34]Mad Money (University of Manchester Press, 1998) updated the analysis ofCasino Capitalism to the late 1990s.[35] At the time of her death, she was working on an exposition of her theory of the international money system.[36] Strange argued inMad Money that complex derivatives, such as credit default swaps, had increased systemic risk in the global financial system.[35] She has been described as a prescient thinker who foresaw multiple aspects of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.[37] In 2024, the BISA organised an event on Strange's work, which "has enjoyed a renaissance recently".[38]
In 1942, Strange married Denis Merritt (died 1993); they had one son and one daughter, and the marriage was dissolved in 1955. That same year, she married Clifford Selly, with whom she had three sons and one daughter.[3] She died on 25 October 1998.[3]
Strange is credited for being "almost single-handedly responsible for creating international political economy",[8] and described as "a great international relations theorist",[13] as well as "arguably Britain's most influential scholar of world politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Today, she is widely recognized for having put the field of International Political Economy (IPE) on the map in the UK."[39] Of her legacy,Frances Pinter wrote: "Today much of what she warned against has come to pass. Some criticise her for not having predicted everything that's happened since the books were published, but soothsaying has never been a precise art. Suffice to say, she got it right most of the time."[40]
Barry K. Gills said that Strange's death had "robbed IPE of one of its most influential and colourful scholars".[41] Strange was honoured byRobert W. Cox and Roger Tooze in two written analyses of her career and influence.[41] EconomistRonen Palan ofCity University of London argued that Strange was a "great theorist" who was held back and neglected due tosexism.[23] In summarising her influence, Nat Dyer positively likened her ideas to those ofHyman Minsky, whom he described as "a once obscure economist who shot to fame after the financial crisis",[23] added that she was "one of the principal thinkers who foresaw multiple aspects" of the global2008 financial crisis and its aftermath that led to theGreat Recession, and observed that she "deserves credit for her prescience but has been overlooked".[37]
Strange was honoured as the first female academic to have a professorship named after her at the LSE and remembered through several annual awards.[42] TheSusan Strange Award was established in 1998 by the US-based ISA and "recognizes a person whose singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency in the international studies community".[43] The Susan Strange Book Prize was established in 2010 by the BISA "for an outstanding book published in any field of International Studies" each year.[44] The Susan Strange Young Scholar Award was given by the Center for Global Studies at theUniversity of Bonn for "female students who have submitted an excellent thesis with a research focus on international relations".[45] In 2024,King's College London and the LSE hosted a two-day conference celebrating and debating the continuing relevance of Strange's thinking both in and outside academia.[46]
