This book examines national power in the contemporary international system through an empirically grounded and theoretically integrated framework. Rooted in the trans-structural approach, it builds upon the theory of national-international power and consolidates the World Power Index (WPI) as a comprehensive measure of state capabilities across material, semimaterial, and immaterial dimensions.

The volume applies the WPI to measure, classify, and compare national power across the Global North and Global South, analyzing its implications for the provision of global public goods, health equity, artificial intelligence, ecological asymmetries, and the strategic role of elite sport in revealing national power and generating soft power.

More than a collection of studies, this book establishes the WPI as a reference framework for the study of national power and the international geostructure, offering scholars and policymakers a systematic foundation for interpreting the global power shift.

Daniel Morales Ruvalcaba is Associate Professor at Sun Yat-sen University (China) and creator of the World Power Index (WPI), a multidimensional framework for analysing national power in the contemporary international system. He has held academic positions in Mexico and been a visiting scholar at Sciences Po (France), Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Poland), and Universidad de la República (Uruguay). He serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. His research centres on Latin America, BRICS, and the Global South, examining shifting configurations of world power.

Carlos Pulleiro Méndez is an Associate Researcher at Tongji University, Shanghai, China. He holds a PhD in International Studies from the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and was a research fellow at Sun Yat-sen University (2018-2021) and a visiting scholar at the University of Deusto (2019-2020), Bilbao, Spain. In 2022, he became a lecturer at the European University of Gasteiz, Spain. His research focuses on sports diplomacy, international relations, and the geopolitics of sport.

Alberto Rocha Valencia holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Paris VIII, France. He is Research Professor (Titular C) at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, where he leads the consolidated research group “Integration, Governance, and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.” He previously served as Director of the Institute of Economic and Social Research at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Peru) and contributed to establishing postgraduate programmes in Political Science and Social Sciences at the University of Colima. A member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (1994–2024), his work focuses on Political Science, International Politics, regional integration, and globalisation.