America's post-Cold War grand-strategy makers and corporate elite networks

Having outlined our historical perspective, underlying the continuity of American grand strategy in terms of the Open Door, in this chapter we will first provide a further conceptualization of the main dimensions that in our view help to explain this continuity – that is, the social position of U.S. grand-strategy makers in terms of their corporate and policy planning affiliations. Second, we will elucidate our dataset and describe the methods employed to analyze the data: a combination of biographical mapping and Social Network Analysis. The chapter will then discuss our main findings regarding the selected post-Cold War grand-strategy makers, their career paths within U.S. government, their corporate affiliations, and their links to policy planning networks.