Abstract
Cross-border state-led investment is a recently rising, but understudied phenomenon of the global political economy. Existing research employs an anecdotal and case-oriented perspective that does not engage in a systemic, large-scale analysis of this rise of transnational state investment and its consequences for the transformation of state power in 21st century capitalism. We take a first step at filling this gap and offer two original contributions: Conceptually, we operationalize transnational foreign state-led investment on the basis of weighted ownership ties. These state capital ties are created by states as investors in corporations around the world. Empirically, we demonstrate our approach by setting up and analyzing the largest dataset on transnational state capital up to date. We show which different outward strategies states as owners employ and classify states according to their relative positions within the global network of transnational state capital. Our results illustrate a crucial aspect of the ongoing transformation of state power and sovereignty within globalization and we demonstrate how a careful and data-driven approach is able to identify different pathways and dimensions of this transformation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 433-475 |
| Number of pages | 43 |
| Journal | Review of International Political Economy |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 3 May 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement number 638946). We thank Jan Fichtner, Diliara Valeeva, Lukas Linsi, Henk Overbeek, Bruce Cronin, Philip Schleifer and Annette Freyberg-Inan for their valuable comments on different versions of this article. We are especially grateful to Frank Takes for his help with the initial data gathering and to Jasper van Nijhuis for his assistance in the final data gathering process. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement number 638946).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement number 638946). We thank Jan Fichtner, Diliara Valeeva, Lukas Linsi, Henk Overbeek, Bruce Cronin, Philip Schleifer and Annette Freyberg-Inan for their valuable comments on different versions of this article. We are especially grateful to Frank Takes for his help with the initial data gathering and to Jasper van Nijhuis for his assistance in the final data gathering process. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement number 638946).
Keywords
- corporations
- foreign investment
- globalization
- International political economy
- state capital
- state capitalism
- transnational capitalism