Infrastructural Power and the State in the Age of Geoeconomic Competition

In 1984, Michael Mann introduced the concept of “infrastructural power,” referring to the state's capacity to penetrate civil society and implement policies across its territory. While influential, this concept requires reevaluation. Today, infrastructural power operates under profoundly transformed conditions shaped by globalization, geoeconomic competition, and the polycrisis. Transnational infrastructures, extending across state borders and financed by public and private entities, underscore the need to rethink their scope and implications. We argue for infrastructural power's further development within state theory, challenging Mann's assumption that state power is territorially bounded. This article proposes an analytical framework integrating state theory and international political economy, interpreting intensified geoeconomic competition as an expression of financialized transnational high-tech capitalism and examining infrastructural power in both its strategic-instrumental and systemic-emergent dimensions. By combining Gramscian and post-Weberian insights with infrastructural theory, the article offers a more comprehensive understanding of state power in the contemporary global order.