THE GEOPOLITICS OF INSTITUTIONAL ASYMMETRY

The Geopolitics of Institutional Asymmetry develops a theoretical framework for understanding why political communities possessing comparable material resources frequently produce markedly different geopolitical outcomes. Moving beyond approaches centred primarily on geography, military capability, economic strength and demographic scale, the theory argues that long-term strategic power increasingly depends upon the quality and adaptive capacity of institutional ecosystems. Institutional Memory, Institutional Capital, Institutional Capacity, Institutional Agency, Institutional Innovation, Resilience, Gravity and Projection form a cumulative process through which knowledge and resources are transformed into renewable strategic capability. This Extended Academic Summary presents the book’s principal concepts, analytical architecture and comparative approach, including the different institutional pathways represented by the European Union, the United States and China. It further examines the relationship between Institutional Asymmetry, Adaptive Power and Strategic Sovereignty and considers their implications for technological acceleration, artificial intelligence and increasingly complex forms of geopolitical competition. Published alongside the full volume, this essay provides a concise scholarly entry point into the theory while directing readers to the book for its complete theoretical development, comparative analysis, methodological foundations and bibliography. The central proposition is that twenty-first-century power increasingly depends not simply upon resources possessed, but upon the institutional capacity to organise, preserve, adapt and continuously renew them.