Economic Statecraft program
Research & Educational Materials
Publications
Key Topics of Publication
Supply Chain Security
- Norris, William, Joseph Balmain Rodgers, Chase Blazek, Tarni Hewage, and Braeden Kobza. “A Market-Oriented Approach to Supply Chain Security.” Security Challenges 16, no. 4 (2020): 65–81. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26976258.
- Egel, Daniel, Eyck Freymann, William Norris, and Joshua Stinson. 2025. “A Multilateral Commercial Stockpile for Critical Minerals.” Hoover History Lab Working Paper. Hoover Institution. Available at: https://www.hoover.org/research/multilateral-commercial-stockpile-critical-minerals
Research Security & Innovation
- Norris, William J., Katie Vaughan-Naron, Neha Kashyap, and Joseph Balmain Rodgers. “Inoculating the University R&D Enterprise: How RISC Can Strengthen Post-COVID-19 Research Integrity and Global Supply Chains.” Business and Politics 24, no. 2 (2022): 113–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/bap.2022.2.
- Research & Innovation Security & Competitiveness Institute (RISC). https://bush.tamu.edu/research/institutes/risc/
Foundational Theories of Economic Statecraft
- Norris, William J. “Security Externalities: A Firm-Centric Theoretical Framework for Economic Statecraft: States, Firms and Geoeconomic Agency: The Role of Private Business in Contemporary Economic Statecraft and Security”, Law & Geoeconomics 1, 2 (2025): 175-213, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/29505720-bja00009
- Norris, William J., ‘The Intersection of Economics and Security: Mapping the Landscape’, in Vinod K. Aggarwal, and Tai Ming Cheung (eds), Thinking about Geoeconomics and Economic Statecraft, in Vinod K. Aggarwal, and Tai Ming Cheung (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Geoeconomics and Economic Statecraft, Oxford Handbooks (2025; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Feb. 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197673546.013.2.
Chinese Economic Statecraft
- Norris, William J. “Chapter 2: The Future of China’s Economic Power.” In Strategic Asia 2023-2024: Reshaping Economic Interdependence in the Indo-Pacific, edited by Ashley Tellis, Alison Szalwinski & Michael Wills, pp. 35-68. National Bureau of Asian Research, 2023. https://www.nbr.org/publication/strategic-asia-reshaping-economic-interdependence-in-the-indo-pacific/
- Norris, William. “Party in the Boardroom.” In Chinese State Capitalism: Diagnosis and Prognosis, edited by Scott Kennedy and Jude Blanchette CSIS, 2021.
- Tyler, J. Tedford, Saron Araya, Ryan Sullivan, Tarni Hewage, Phila Li, and William J. Norris. 2021. “Hong Kong Hardball.” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 13 (4): 733–39. doi:10.1080/19406940.2021.1915850.
American Economic Statecraft
- Norris, William. “Economic Statecraft and the Federal Institutional Architecture.” War on the Rocks, 2026. Available at: https://warontherocks.com/economic-statecraft-and-the-federal-institutional-architecture/
- Blessing, Jason, William Norris, Joshua Stinson, and Tim Welter. “Navigating a Reset of the Global Economic Order.” Conference Proceedings at Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2025. https://www.potomacinstitute.org/event/report-launch-navigating-the-reset-of-the-global-economic-order
Current Projects
Dataset of Contemporary Economic Statecraft
This project is an ongoing effort to index the empirical picture of contemporary economic statecraft episodes from 2015 to present day. The dataset uniquely catalogues geoeconomic events across 21 distinct fields including sender and target states, government and non-governmental actors, catalytic events, economic mechanisms and domains, and associated security externalities. This project intentionally expands analysis beyond coercive economic mechanisms in an attempt to better understand what works and does not work in economic statecraft.
Quantifying Security Externalities
This project showcases a typology of security externalities that specifies the full range of ways by which economic interaction may be used to generate security consequences for states. Leveraging this precise vocabulary and analytical framework for thinking about the relationship between economics and national security, this project focuses on developing series of weighted success indicators for each externality. This framework therefore illuminates the concrete strategic consequences of various economic interactions and specifies the magnitude of success far better than any existing framework. The project’s objective is to improve evaluation metrics and methods for understanding economic statecraft’s real-world effects.
Virtual Bookshelf
In order to better engage the burgeoning field of Economic Statecraft, we as a program have prepared a virtual bookshelf of works in the security externalities field. This collection has been compiled with the goal of establishing a baseline of knowledge regarding the field itself. From here, the wider berth of niche and recent writings on economic statecraft may better be contextualized going forward.- Commercial actors pursue their interests (economic interaction).
- By accident or design, these interactions may carry important implications for states’ strategic security situation (security externalities).
- States can manipulate these security externalities (economic statecraft).
- Assuming the conditional variables are present, success or failure of economic statecraft hinges on how well states control or direct commercial actors to generate security externalities (state control). Economic Statecraft – Bibliography
Course Modules
If you are interested in educational materials organized as course modules in the following topic areas, please submit an inquiry at economicstatecraft@tamu.edu
- Tools of Economic Statecraft Module Cluster
- Targeting the Economic Health Module
- Military Effects of Economic Statecraft Module
- Industrial Policy and Economic Statecraft Module Cluster
- The Fundamentals of Economic Statecraft Module Cluster
- Economic Statecraft of the Future
- Chinese Economic Statecraft in Africa Topic Primer
Events
SAVE THE DATE Please join us as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11th, honoring the nearly 3,000 lives lost and celebrating the acts of…
Speaker Series
2024 Breakfast Speaker SeriesThe Economic Statecraft Breakfast Series engages current and former executive branch officials, scholars, and congressional staffers in regular dialogue about economic/security challenges and innovative policy solutions. The Spring 2024 series ran five thematically-oriented sessions covering effects-based, actionable frameworks for thinking about and doing economic statecraft. A small group of invitees attend regular monthly discussions to build intellectual capital around economic statecraft. This series was followed by a half-day conference in December 2024 focused on leadership, strategic capacity, strategy & doctrine development, and human capital/talent management for economic statecraft.
2023 Speaker Series
China’s Politics and Economics in the 2020s – Convergence or Divergence?
November 2, 2023 | Zoom | Dr. Rana Mitter, Harvard University
Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty
October 19, 2023 | Zoom | Dr. Aynne Kokas, University of Virginia
China’s Relational Power in Africa: Beijing’s “New Type of Party-to-Party Relations”
October 5, 2023 | Zoom | Dr. Joshua Eisenman, University of Notre Dame
Mad Money? China’s Digital Currency & Questions of Weaponized Interdependence
September 28, 2023 | Zoom | Dr. Marc Lanteigne, University of Tromsø
America’s Competitiveness in the Global Economy
September 21, 2023 | Zoom | Craig Allen, President, US-China Business Council
2021 Speaker Series
The Logic and Limits of China’s Outward Investment
April 13, 2021 | Zoom | Dr. Meg Rithmire
The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence
April 6, 2021 | Zoom | Dr. Henry Farrell, George Washington University and Dr. Abraham L. Newman, Georgetown University
The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century
March 30, 2021 | Zoom | Jonathan Hillman, CSIS
The Rise of China and the Future of Globalization
March 23, 2021 | Zoom | Dr. Aaron Friedberg, Princeton University
Economic Statecraft Begins at Home
March 16, 2021 | Zoom | Dr. Jonathan Kirshner, Boston College
Exploring the Parameters of China’s Economic Influence
March 9, 2021 | Zoom | Dr. Margaret Pearson, University of Maryland
Global Monetary (Dis)Order and the Future of the Liberal International Order
March 2, 2021 | Zoom | Dr. Benjamin Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara
Preparing the United States for the Superpower Marathon with China
February 9, 2021 | Zoom | Michael Brown, Director, Defense Innovation Unit
National Security Council policy making process and the nexus of economics and security
December 15, 2020 | Zoom | Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jason Galui, SMU Cox
Contact Us
Want to know more?If you are interested in learning more about any of our projects, or would like to get in touch with us about sponsored research or collaboration, please contact our program at economicstatecraft@tamu.edu.
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