MOVING BEYOND MATERIALISM: REEVALUATING AND RECLASSIFYING CORE POWER ELEMENTS VIA POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND STATE CAPACITY

This research expands the investigation into the underpinnings of state power by moving beyond the traditional materialist viewpoint which stresses the importance of economic and military dominance. It posits that, in the twenty-first century, a country’s most significant asset is its political legitimacy and state capacity, that is, the ability of state institutions, both competent and normative, to convert resources into enduring power. The author has carried out a comparative study involving six countries which reflect a plurality of governance systems, and concludes that legitimacy and capacity more strongly determine the global power of a state than the traditional quantitative measures of GDP and military spending. Countries with sound governance frameworks enjoy more resilience, coherence, and diplomatic and policy reach than materially more powerful states, which lacks sound governance frameworks. The author consolidates these findings under a new construct which the author calls the Hybrid Theory of Power (HTP). The study asserts that enduring power manifests when resources are fused with governance of a high moral order, and offers as a central priority for both emerging and advanced states the strategies of institutional reform, civic participation, and policy capacity, empirical in nature, to address the governance problems which are fundamental to the new global order.