Research Papers

Power in international relations is defined as capacities possessed and capability to control over others by using these capacities in order to affect behaviors of others. Therefore, power of all actors within international system is determined in the framework of those capacities possessed and impact created. Like all actors which want to play efficient role in international relations and have ideal to shape the system, the European Union (EU) acts with the idea that the more power would be possible with the increase in capacities about the factors consisting of power. This study consists of revealing how the EU power gaining strategy which is also described as Lisbon Strategy is realized and power measurement of specific countries by considering military capacity, economic capacity, demographic, social and geographical capacity, science and technology capacity and capacity to be international power. In this context, in addition to the EU, the power of the United States, Japan, China, United Kingdom, Germany, Russian Federation and India which are perceived as power within international system is measured and analyzed comparatively on the basis of data in 1997 and 2007. This study should be regarded as an effort to constitute a new index by being inspired by power equity index developed by Cline and overcoming its deficient aspects by using Analytic Hierarchic Process and scaling methods.