In contrast to growing public attention to geoeconomics as the new mode of conducting great power competition, the IR discipline has not actively engaged in conceptual and theoretical analysis from the geoeconomic viewpoint. This article examines issues that geoeconomics needs to solve to become a new theoretical framework in the positivist “American” IR scholarship that dominates research on great power competition. On the one hand, the concept of geoeconomics needs to be redefined and account for a phenomenon that is not already covered in extant IR scholarship. Thus, geoeconomics should be considered as a form of grand strategy and defined as the use of economic instruments to advance mid- to long-term strategic interests in a geographical region of the world. On the other hand, geoeconomics in positivist IR should take into account international economic structure and domestic politics in developing a parsimonious explanation for the conditions to employ geoeconomic grand strategy. In this process, the theorist needs to make an analytical choice to concentrate on certain factors and mechanisms to assure theoretical parsimony. This article concludes that addressing the issues of conceptual clarity and parsimonious theorization would potentially allow geoeconomics to become a new research program in positivist IR.

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使地缘经济学成为 IR 研究项目

与公众日益关注地缘经济学作为进行大国竞争的新模式相比，国际关系学科并没有积极地从地缘经济的角度进行概念和理论分析。本文探讨了地缘经济学需要解决的问题，才能成为主导大国竞争研究的实证主义“美国”国际关系奖学金的新理论框架。一方面，地缘经济学的概念需要重新定义，并解释现有 IR 学术中尚未涵盖的现象。因此，地缘经济学应被视为一种大战略，并被定义为使用经济工具来推进世界某个地理区域的中长期战略利益。另一方面，实证 IR 中的地缘经济学应考虑国际经济结构和国内政治，以对采用地缘经济大战略的条件进行简洁的解释。在这个过程中，理论家需要做出分析选择，专注于某些因素和机制，以确保理论简洁。本文的结论是，解决概念清晰度和简约理论化的问题可能使地缘经济学成为实证主义 IR 中的一个新研究项目。