Indispensable-Input Control

indispensable-input-control measures structural power over the method of production — control of the inputs, processes, and technical methods others cannot produce without. The structural question is: who controls the indispensable input or process that everyone else's production depends on, and can deny access to it? — not who has the largest manufacturing capacity. This metric serves Strange's "by what method" clause of the production structure.

Strange defines the production structure as "the sum of all the arrangements determining what is produced, by whom and for whom, by what method and on what terms" (Strange 1994, p.64). The structural lever is not output but control over the method and the power to exclude:

• "by what method and on what terms" (Strange 1994, p.64) — method is a defining clause of the structure.
• "whoever is able to develop or acquire and to deny the access of others to a kind of knowledge respected and sought by others… will exercise a very special kind of structural power" (Strange 1994, p.30) — the denial-of-access lever.
• The class controlling the mode of production lays down "legal and administrative processes and precedents that make it hard for others to challenge or upset" (Strange 1994, p.29) — method-standard setting.
• "Such economic power will be all the greater if they are the only ones able to sell it, if, in short, they have monopoly or oligopoly power" (Strange 1994, p.25) — a non-substitutable input is monopoly power over a method everyone else must use.

A country can hold vast fabs (capability) yet set no terms; control of a single non-substitutable input (lithography, rare-earth refining) confers structural power over everyone else's production.