The late Susan Strange suggested we should think of power backwards from its effects, and not in terms of intended outcomes. As Nye’s later concept of ‘soft power’, her concept of structural power stresses both the diffusion of the origins of power (and the variety of power resources), and the diffusion of its effects. For her, power no longer lies mainly with states or with military capabilities, but with, for instance, the international control of credit and knowledge. Similarly, there is no reason to exclude from power analysis all those crucial effects that might not have been intended. Whether interest rate policies of the German Bundesbank were intended to destabilise the European Monetary System in the late 1980s, is less significant, than the fact that only a few players could have effected such an outcome. As an old Chinese saying has it, it makes little difference to the trampled grass beneath whether the elephants above it make love or war.

This analytical shift from intentions to effects diminishes the importance of the neo-institutionalist approach for understanding power, based on resources, interests and rationality. It focuses on systematic and structural, not on chosen features of power. Such an approach is still compatible with an individualist approach, yet one in which unintended consequences are given a special place. In general, however, such approaches tend not to include such effects into their concept of power, a decision which has consequences (see below).