Great power rivalry in energy politics scholarship: A bibliometric and thematic analysis

Abstract

The study of “energy politics” is considered one of the rapidly growing subfields of International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE). The convergence of state policies and geopolitical factors has consistently shaped the domain. “Energy”, as a unitary influencing factor, has long been at the heart of geopolitical strategy, as seen in the 1973 oil embargo and continuing disputes about acquiring natural gas by the great powers such as the US, Russia, and China. Now, with the international push for sustainability, countries are competing not only for fossil fuel reserves but also for domination in renewable technologies. Given the dynamics, this research explores the field’s paradigmatic evolution of the study area of “energy politics”, focusing on “political and geopolitical dynamics” that influenced the intellectual evolution of the scholarship. Applying a mixed-method approach (bibliometric quantitative analysis and thematic qualitative analysis), the findings of the bibliometric study—which analyzed 1567 peer-reviewed articles published from 2001 to 2024—yielded not only a comprehensive perspective on the evolution of energy politics research but also key insights into the future development in this area. Further thematic discussion also shows the great power rivalry between the US and China in this knowledge production arena. This paper concludes with the central argument that even beyond the great power competition in the economy and military realms between the two powers, they also compete in the knowledge-production arena, like the energy sector, to generate discourses and knowledge in favor of their hegemony.