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Hall of Shoulders

Grand Strategy & IR

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Anne-Marie Slaughter is known for Networked world order, "webcraft" (strategies of connection), and disaggregated sovereignty - the argument that the state has come apart into its functional component institutions (courts, regulators, legislators, agencies) that increasingly govern through transgovernmental and transnational networks rather than the unitary billiard-ball state of classical realism.. **Brain type:** Individual, citation-grounded application of the thinker's frameworks to contemporary space challenges. **Built:** 2026-06-14

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43

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Review Lens

Adversarial questions for candidates

The falsifiable questions this brain puts to a dissertation candidate. They seed the pre-Conclave initial review whenever a candidate's topic matches the Grand Strategy & IR lens.

  1. 1

    The unitary-state assumption. "You model space governance as states bargaining as wholes. Show me the disaggregated actors. Which specific functional officials — which regulators, militaries, standards bodies, commercial conjunction services — actually make the decision you are analyzing, and does your model's prediction change when you disaggregate them? If it does not change, defend the assumption empirically." (Falsifiable: produce the actor-level data and test whether unit-of-analysis matters.)

  2. 2

    Network vs. hierarchy. "You propose a centralized authority (a 'global STM body,' a 'space UN'). Give me the measurable failure of the existing transgovernmental network that only a hierarchy can fix, and show why the same function could not be achieved by networking the existing functional officials. If you cannot specify a network-unsolvable failure, your hierarchy is solving a problem you have not demonstrated exists.

  3. 3

    The accountability test. "Your networked/decentralized mechanism governs behavior in orbit. Name the body that can be held accountable for its decisions, the mechanism of contestation, and the transparency provisions. If the answer is 'none,' you have reproduced the legitimacy deficit, not solved it. Quantify the accountability your design adds over the status quo.

  4. 4

    Power in the web. "You present your network as flat and egalitarian. Identify its hubs. Which actor occupies the highest-centrality node (in data, launch, standards, or discourse), and does your governance design redistribute that centrality or entrench it? Defend your claim of openness against a centrality measurement of who actually holds the nodes.

  5. 5

    Connectedness as power (webcraft). "If connectedness is the coin of power in a networked domain, give me the operational metric. How would a space power measure its own web-centrality, and what specific moves (convening, standard-setting, data-hubbing) would increase it? If 'webcraft' cannot be operationalized into a measurable strategy, it is a metaphor, not a theory — convince me otherwise.

Core Concepts & Space Translation

The disaggregated state

The unitary state is an analytic fiction. States have "come apart" into their functional institutions - central bankers, securities regulators, antitrust officials, judges, legislators, prosecutors - and it is these parts, not the state as a whole, that increasingly conduct the business of global governance. Key work: *A New World Order* (Slaughter 2004, DOI 10.1515/9781400825998); "Disaggregated Sovereignty: Towards the Public Accountability of Global Government Networks" (Slaughter 2004, DOI 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00119.x).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Government networks (transgovernmental networks) as the real new world order

"Networks of government officials - police investigators, financial regulators, even judges and legislators - are a key feature of world order in the twenty-first century" (Slaughter 2004, DOI 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00119.x). These horizontal, informal, function-specific networks (regulatory, judicial, legislative) do the work that formal treaty-based supranational institutions cannot. Key work: "The Real New World Order" (Slaughter 1997, *Foreign Affairs*, DOI 10.2307/20048208); "Governing the Global Economy through Government Networks" (Slaughter 2001, DOI 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244027.003.0010).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Disaggregated / redefined sovereignty (and the accountability deficit)

Sovereignty is no longer a wall around a unitary actor but a bundle of functional capacities to participate in regimes; it becomes the "capacity to engage" in collective governance. But the informal networks that exercise it raise acute accountability and legitimacy problems - they govern without the visible mandate of treaties or parliaments. Slaughter both celebrates the networks and insists they must be made accountable (Slaughter 2004, DOI 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00119.x).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

The liberal-states / domesticated-international-law thesis

International order rests disproportionately on liberal democracies whose internal legal and institutional structures make them reliable network partners; the future of international law is increasingly "domestic," enforced through national courts and agencies rather than only international ones. Key work: "International Law in a World of Liberal States" (Slaughter [Burley] 1995, DOI 10.1093/oxfordjournals.ejil.a035934); "The Future of International Law is Domestic" (Slaughter 2007).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Webcraft: strategy in a networked world (chessboard vs. web)

In her later statement, Slaughter contrasts two mental models of foreign policy: the *chessboard* (states maneuvering pieces in a zero-sum geopolitical game) and the *web* (a dense mesh of connections among governments, firms, NGOs, and individuals). Power in the web is *connectedness* - centrality, the ability to convene, and the capacity to act as a hub. Effective strategy ("webcraft") means deliberately building, occupying, and steering networks rather than only positioning against rivals. Key work: *The Chessboard and the Web* (Slaughter 2017).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.