Higher-Order Dependence,Social Power,and Policy Consistency Between the United States and Its Allies
This article uses social network analysis methods to study which factors will af-fect the policy consistency of the United States and its allies.Like all countries,the US al-lies are in a social network composed of countries and other international behavior.As nodes in the social network,they depend on other nodes on the one hand,and on the other hand,they are also relied upon by other nodes.Dependence on others leads to subordina-tion and being dominated,and being depended on creates power,both of which affect their consistency of policy with the United States.The study shows that the first-order de-pendence of US allies on the United States,the higher-order dependence of US allies on more social network nodes,and the dependence of other social network nodes on US allies have varying degrees of influence on the policy consistency of US allies and the United States.Among them,the degree of military dependence on the United States,the number of co-allies with the United States,the number of mixed third parties with the United States,and the number of intergovernmental international organizations in which the United States participates positively affect the policy consistency of both parties;the social power that the US allies gain from their position in multilateral social networks in the fields of trade,military affairs and intergovernmental international organizations negatively affects the policy consistency of both parties.This reminds us that if China wants to alleviate the strategic pressure brought by the United States alliance,and develop a cooperative relation-ship with the US allies more effectively,it can give priority to those US allies with impor-tant social networks,less military dependence on the United States,and fewer common al-lies,mixed third parties,and intergovernmental international organizations that the United States participates in.
alliance managementalliance politicsUnited States alliance strategyUnited States alliance systemsocial network analysis
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
