Genesis and genealogy of the concept of power: the 1998 October crisis between Turkey and Syria

Abstract

Although power is one of the central concepts of International Relations, it is obvious that there is lack of consensus on what the concept means. As a result, there are many power conceptualizations today circulating in the discipline. Given the centrality of the concept, diversity within power conceptualizations creates negative implications for International Relations, curbing scholarly communication among power analysts and reducing the analytical strength of the discipline. Having concerns about the implications of diversity within power conceptualizations, the dissertation conducts a conceptual analysis on the concept of power in International Relations in order to highlight fundamental differences between the existing power conceptualizations by revealing the historical and theoretical contexts in which they are embedded. Then, the diverse power conceptualizations in the discipline are applied on a case study that is the 1998 October Crisis in order to compare and contrast their explanatory potentials and different focuses of aspects. Based on these, the dissertation aims to diminish the level of ambiguity on the concept of power, and to contribute the scholarly communication among power analysts in the discipline. To this end, the dissertation mainly asks three major questions: (1) why are there many power conceptualizations in International Relations? Or, how has power come to be conceptualized in many ways? (2) how has a specific power conceptualization come to mean as it is known to mean in a particular way? (3) what are the main features and focuses of aspects of the existing power conceptualizations?