Daniela Russ, born 1987, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph, Canada. Trained as a historical sociologist in Berlin, New York, and Bielefeld, she is currently working on her first book, Working Nature: Steam, Power, and the Making of the Energy Economy (1830-1980). Her research interests lie in historical epistemology, energy history and the critical theory of nature.
James Stafford, born 1988, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Training Group »World Politics« at Bielefeld University. A historian of Ireland, Britain and Europe since 1750, his first book, The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order 1776-1848, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. He completed his Ph.D. in History at Cambridge University in 2016, and worked as a Lecturer in Modern History at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, before coming to Bielefeld in 2017.

Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Introduction 7
Status in Early Modern and Modern World Politics 35
Network Power Europe and Competition at the UN Human Rights Council 61
Social Mobility in the Global Order 83
The Civilizing Force of National Competition 107
'Free Trade' and the Varieties of Eighteenth-Century State Competition 133
The Development of Neoliberal Measures of Competitiveness 155
Competing Powers 183
Diplomacy and Artificial Intelligence in Global Political Competition 213
Small, Smart, Powerful? 233
Between Strategic Autonomy and International Norm-setting 261
Competition During Covid-19 289
About the Authors 301