The past two decades have seen a rapid rise in large-scale, state-led transnational investment from countries as different as China, Norway and Russia. By bundling economic resources, these countries ...have entered global markets through massive state-led investments. This transformation of states into global economic actors is historically unprecedented and presents a major challenge for how states relate to each other in the international system. Milan Babic examines how states have become major corporate owners in the global economy and unpacks the lasting effects of this on our understanding of the state and international politics. Drawing on research into the largest firm-level dataset on state ownership to date, in combination with in-depth historical and conceptual analysis, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of the rise of the state in the global economy and its present and future consequences for international relations.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerates and exacerbates many preexisting tendencies in the global political economy. Consequently, the crisis of the liberal international order (LIO), which has been ...ongoing for several years, is also being affected by the pandemic. These effects are, however, not uniform: some aspects of the crisis of the LIO, as a multidimensional phenomenon, are under more pressure than others. In this article, I detail these varied effects with a specific focus on questions of geopolitics and hegemonic change. I argue that especially the societal level, where socioeconomic distortions and popular discontent are long-existing drivers of crisis, will be severely hit by the social and economic fallout of the pandemic. I conclude by suggesting a set of hypotheses regarding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the crisis of the LIO that can be tested once more data becomes available.
Abstract
Chinese outward investment is increasing in its relevance for the global economy, and its effects on host states are increasingly being scrutinized globally. While European policy-making was ...ambiguous about the question of hosting Chinese state-led investment (CSLI) in the early 2010s, we can observe a recent surge of protectionist legal measures across Europe. What explains this trend among different European countries? Through the lens of incremental ideational change, we hypothesize that the rise of China as a global investor shifts the perceptions of policy-makers away from being a source of investment toward a potential threat to national security. We argue that this China effect affects advanced European economies similarly. We provide evidence by studying the shift in perceptions among policy-makers in a coordinated and a liberal market economy, Germany and the UK. By drawing on document analysis and expert interviews, we unpack the policy processes in both countries in the last decade. Despite being two dissimilar cases, both show a similar outcome in increasingly curbing CSLI on the grounds of national security reasons. Our results add important insights to recent International Political Economy discussions on the “geopoliticization” of European trade and investment rules in the face of a rising China.
Decarbonising states as owners Babić, Milan; Dixon, Adam D.
New political economy,
07/2023, Letnik:
28, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Environmental state debates focus on the governance and steering functions of politics. Concurrently, many states stand out as large global owners and investors in carbon industries. Via various ...investment vehicles, states control around half of all global oil and gas reserves as well as other carbon assets. We know very little, however, about where these states are invested; how they conduct their carbon investment; and what possibilities and constraints carbon-owning states have to decarbonise. Yet, these aspects - the geography, investment profiles and domestic state carbon capital dependence - are key to assess the possibilities and limitations of climate action states as carbon owners have. Based on new fine-grained firm-level data, we deliver conceptual and empirical insights into all three issues. Our intervention fills an important gap in our knowledge about the environmental state, while drawing the attention of researchers and policymakers to a blind spot, but also to transformation potentials of the carbon-owning state in the following decade.
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.
Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state investment does in a globalized economy, especially in host ...states. Comparative capitalisms research has analyzed foreign state investment as a potential source of patient capital for coordinated and mixed-market economies. However, this patient capital framework cannot explain the recent surge of protectionist sentiments, even among the “good hosts” of state-led investment. Therefore, we go beyond the patient capital argument and develop a novel framework centered on the globalized nature of foreign state investment. We create and empirically illustrate a novel typology based on different modes of cross-border state investment—from financial to strategic—and different categories of host states. Our results provide a new pathway to study the rise and effects of cross-border state investment in the 21st century.
In this paper, a methodology for substrate noise reduction in mixed-signal integrated circuits (IC) in lightly doped substrates is proposed. The methodology is based on separating a digital aggressor ...circuitry into two power domains, one closer and one more distant from the victim. By proper assignment of digital modules in one of those two domains, substrate noise sensed by an analog victim is reduced. Additional reduction is achieved by clocking these two modules with independent clocks, thus making them locally synchronous modules (LSMs) of a GALS (globally-asynchronous, locally synchronous) system. A GALS partitioning algorithm is developed to obtain an optimal noise reduction. The methodology is evaluated by numerical simulations in MATLAB.
Myocardial ischaemia is followed by some reversibile or ireversibile changes. The aim of cardioplegia is to protect numerous intracellular processes: to spare the intracellular energy stores, to ...reduce the free oxygen radicals synthesis, to protect the function of the endothelium and myocardial oxygen balance as well as ionic balance. The crystalloid or blood cardioplegia, with anterograde or retrograde infusion, is a basic procedure of the intraoperative cardiac protection. Glucose-insulin-potassium solution was primarily used in a myocardial infarction. After the first promising results, some surgical teams started to use the high glucose-insulin-potassium solution, as a metabolic modulation approach, during a coronary surgery as addition to cardioplegia. During ischaemia, a number of intracellular mechanisms deteriorate with bioenergy misbalance and decrease of cellular functional reserve. In particular, the regulation of contractility in response to loading, alteration in autocrine or paracrine regulation in metabolically stressed hearts and acquired, "learned" tolerance of muscle to deteriorate perfusion (preconditioning) are examples of a variety of the cardiac adaptation. The further improvement in the metabolic modulation during a coronary surgery was made with fluorine ion halogenated volatile aneasthetics used for anaesthesia. The results of some experimental and first clinical studies induced a new approach to the modulation of the intracellular metabolic mechanisms and announced a new concept of anaesthetic preconditioning in coronary surgery. Large, randomized studies are needed to evaluate anaesthetic preconditioning and dependence of its efficiency on type and dose of volatile anaesthetics as well as the role of gene regulation in cardioprotection.
Abstract
The liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis. Numerous publications, debates and events have time and again made it clear that we are in the midst of a grand transformation of world ...order. While most contributions focus on either what is slowly dying (the LIO) or what might come next (China, multipolarity, chaos?), there is less analytical engagement with what lies in between those two phases of world order. Under the assumption that this period could last years or even decades, a set of analytical tools to understand this interregnum is urgently needed. This article proposes an analytical framework that builds on Gramscian concepts of crisis that will help us understand the current crisis of the LIO in a more systematic way. It addresses a gap in the literature on changing world order by elaborating three Gramsci-inspired crisis characteristics—processuality, organicity and morbidity—that sketch the current crisis landscape in a systematic way. Building on this framework, the article suggests different empirical entry points to the study of the crisis of the LIO and calls for a research agenda that takes this crisis seriously as a distinct period of changing world orders.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
What are the consequences of the rise of foreign state-led investment for international politics? Existing research oscillates between a 'geopolitical' and a 'commercial' logic driving this type of ...investment and remains inconclusive about its wider international reverberations. In this paper, I suggest going beyond this dichotomy by analyzing its systemic consequences. To do so, I conceptually delineate a geoeconomic approach that emphasizes the globalized nature of foreign state investment. I argue that foreign state investment creates system-level patterns, which can be studied by observing similar sectoral and geographic investment behavior. I map this phenomenon globally for the first time, drawing on the largest dataset on foreign state investment. Empirically, I show how foreign state investment is highly concentrated in Europe, North America and East Asia, and is owned by a handful of dominant states. It is especially European geo-industrial clusters that represent the hotspots of such concentration. The findings also suggest that three global industries - energy production, high-tech manufacturing, and transportation and logistics - form the key areas for current and future state-led investment concentration. With these contributions, the paper illuminates the increasing presence of states as owners in the global political economy, and facilitates its study as a geoeconomic phenomenon.
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