Description
Global naval power projection is a prized commodity among great and rising powers, who seek to copy the successful examples of the Dutch Republic, the Swedish and British Empires, or the contemporary United States. Most recently, analysts have identified China as the most recent contender for an attempt to project naval power globally. At the same time, many attempts to build and sustain similar such fleets have failed, despite great investments of political and economic capital, such as in the Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and the USSR. Much of the literature on this topic either centres on military and grand strategic or geopolitical questions, or fails to operationalize its descriptions of states’ politics, economics, and societies. Critically, such an operationalization would require a theoretical acknowledgment of power projection navies as an endeavour that is societally embedded, legitimised, and reproduced.
This paper attempts three things. First, it identifies and critiques the gap in the existing literature. Second, drawing on comparative history and political sociology, it proposes a new interdisciplinary lens on the phenomenon of naval power projection and its construction in great and rising powers. Third, using the method of agreement, it identifies certain factors that all cases of sustained global naval power projection have and had in common. These include reliable elite consensus, property rights, the co-optation of business interests into the political system, differentiated banking, finance, and insurance markets, an effective tax and welfare state, and an internationally accepted currency.
