Infrastructural power in foreign policy: conceptualising states’ efforts to mobilise non-state actors

Abstract

This article translates Michael Mann’s notion of infrastructural power into the foreign policy realm and develops a conceptual framework that allows for the systematic treatment of states’ strategic efforts at mobilising domestic non-state actors. Despite the common rationales underlying such efforts across regime types, the article argues that states’ systemic features matter greatly. It generates two ideal types of infrastructural power in foreign policy – bureaucratic and authoritarian – to capture the distinct mobilisational modes and trajectories of each. Using a typical case study design, it scrutinises Turkey’s shifting Africa policies under AKP rule. The empirical discussion supports two initial assumptions: first, the concept, partly by dint of its underlying organisational approach, introduces a novel take on power in IR, yet one complementary to the relational understanding prevailing in the discipline; second, it provides an original tool with which to systematically analyse crucial components in the foreign policies of democracies and autocracies.