Geoeconomics. A Critique of a Genealogy and an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda

Geoeconomics is the new talk of the town, but what does it mean? Geoeconomics speaks to various, distinct conversations in International Political Economy (Babić et al. 2022), International Relations (Abels 2024), Security Studies (Bauerle Danzman 2025), Law (Moraes 2024) and other disciplines such as geography (Mallin and Sidaway 2024) or regional studies (Khalili 2018; Jerzyniak and Herranz-Surrallés 2024; Beeson 2018). In addition, a plethora of sectoral analyses, from energy (Meckling 2025; Goldthau 2021) to development (De Medeiros and Mazat 2019) to intelligence studies (Hoffmann 2022) make reference to geoeconomics. Yet, the latter does not amount to a theoretically robust, coherent or analytically meaningful concept. To the contrary, an increasingly diverse set of writings offer competing heuristics of geoeconomics and the concept sparks highly diverse empirical investigations (Mohr and Trebesch 2025). This paper argues that the concept of geoeconomics urgently requires deconstruction, to investigate and separate the distinct, often hidden meanings that the concept implies. To carry out this task, we first present a critical genealogy of the concept of geoeconomics, to uncover its theoretical implications for key notions such as the state, sovereignty and/or capitalism. Second, we map how geoeconomics links to different fields of enquiry, and how the term highlights a variety of highly relevant developments in the international political economy. Third, and building on this mapping, we develop an interdisciplinary and critical research agenda that takes geoeconomics’ conceptual and historical baggage into account, while emphasizing the concept’s rich potential for wide-ranging, innovative research. Authored by a group of scholars hailing from IPE, International Relations, Public Policy and Law, the article brings different ontologies and epistemologies to bear on one of the most rapidly evolving conversations of our time.