The rise of transnational state capital: state-led foreign investment in the 21st century

Milan Babic, Javier Garcia-Bernardo and Eelke M. Heemskerk

Review of International Political Economy, 2020, vol. 27, issue 3, 433-475

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.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1665084

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