Susan Strange: The Authority of Questioning

Susan Strange: The Authority of Questioning (Eugenia Baroncelli) Susan Strange started her career as a journalist in the 1940s. When she passed away in 1998 she was already regarded as one of the main scholars in International relations (IR) and, particularly, International Political Economy (IPE), a field whose creation owes much to her intellectual and academic engagement. Advocates and critics have debated her work, often prompted by her innovative ideas and vibrant intertextual style. Looking at the distinctive traits of Strange’s research and personality, this chapter first goes through the main merits of her thought and academic engagement. Based on inputs from critical voices, it then discusses three aspects of her thought (‘theoretical scarcity’, ‘structural power’, and Strange’s attempt to bridge the gap between the study of politics and economics), arguing that these alleged drawbacks (which often stemmed from her explicit eclecticism) help to a large extent to articulate a distinct position in the academic debate between IPE Positivist and Critical-post positivist Schools. Finally, this contribution highlights those arguments and concepts which, innovative in the days when Strange first formulated them, have become key aspects of modern IPE scholarly research, and have proven her interpretation and anticipation of crucial dynamics across different governance levels. In spite of her staunch academic engagement, Strange constantly challenged the orthodox establishment. Her habit of questioning authority made her wary of attempts at categorizing thought and thinkers. However, it is precisely the resilience of those arguments and concepts, enduring yet flexible as they derived from the continuous questioning of facts and theories, which have made of Strange a master of IR and IPE studies, and an ineludible reference point for any serious research on global political-economic relations.