Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Focusing on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) screening, this book provides an in-depth analysis of how European states’ economic interactions with China have become a security issue.
Based on 100 interviews with scholars, journalists, policy makers, and politicians from across Europe, the book underscores the importance of the policy making process that led to the adoption of investment screening in European nations. It adopts the theory of securitization to analyse the passage of the status of Chinese FDI from economy to security. In doing so, it shows how the shifting view of Europeans is attributed to changes such as China’s growing economic presence, the persistence of non-market practices, the loss of competitiveness, and the use of economic statecraft.
This chapter tests the criticism by analysing the role that economic competitiveness – rather than national security – had in shaping part of Europe’s economic security discourse. The chapter also places the accent on the importance of personal preferences of influential actors, such as prime ministers and ministers, in shaping the national – but also regional – economic security debate and agenda. In the cases of the more protectionist countries the process of securitization was triggered by an existing propensity to protect national assets, by the EU-level debate, and by the decision of national stakeholders to address the issue domestically. Remarkably, Italy stands out as the only case in this book where the screening mechanism is repeatedly employed to prevent Chinese acquisitions before they reached the notification stage, and even retroactively unravelling existing deals.
This chapter traces the transformation of economic interactions between the EU and China, specifically Chinese investments, from being welcomed to becoming a security concern for the EU. It treats the EU as a single actor, capable of proposing and adopting legislation and making decisions as a unified entity. The analysis of the process that led to adoption of the EU framework for FDI screening firstly demonstrates how a divisive policy, such as a security approach to the economy, was embraced by most actors and member states and normalized. Secondly, it examines the interplay between security and economic aspects in the EU–China relationship. The chapter analyses the process that led to the perception of FDI and other economic interactions as security threats. The analysis focuses on three key elements: the role of Chinese investments, the influence of economic and security considerations, and the main actors involved in the process.
The focus of this book is on Europe, but economic security is a global debate. In Europe and in the world, it has been moving forward from screening FDI into areas that include supply chains, trade, data management, and economic coercion, to mention a few. Since 2017, countries such as Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and the US have all implemented significant restrictions on economic openness based on security concerns. These changes have accelerated rapidly since the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2023. A number of plurilateral frameworks and fora with a strong economic security agenda have emerged. Notably, the G7 has prioritized economic security and coordination. This chapter provides an overview of how other global actors approach economic security and compares them with the current state of affairs and debates in the EU and the UK.
This book shows that foreign direct investments from China have been at the forefront of tensions between economic opportunity and security risks due to their role in market access and asset acquisition. The book seeks to identify the actors and stakeholders in the EU, and their involvement in the process of securitization – the methods and mechanisms used to transform Chinese FDI from a purely economic matter into a security issue. If views emerge of Chinese FDI as a threat, then these views will induce the transformation of FDI from an economic to a security issue, and trigger a process that facilitates the securitization of other economic interactions. While this claim may sound commonsensical and unsurprising, it is rarely substantiated in wider empirical assessments of the elements that led to the connection between Chinese foreign investment and national security.
A diverse group of European states struggled to internalize the securitization process. These states include cases where the processes were only marginally prompted by the EU’s debate (the UK), and cases where it took longer for the process to start and to conclude (the Netherlands), but overall, they share two common traits: the longstanding attachment to an ideology of open markets and competition, and the absence of a strong legal predecessor to the new regulation for FDI screening. Nonetheless, a line of difference emerges in how the process develops. In the UK, for example, the economic security discourse demonstrates a strong inclination towards protecting narrow national security interests. The pivotal role of the Dutch company ASML has been shaping the stance in the Netherlands, pushing the debate on the country’s economic security to take competitiveness into consideration and touch upon issues such as adopting policies to safeguard technological edge.
Chapter 1 introduces and develops the academic debate around the process of securitization in the economic sector. This chapter shows that economy and security are increasingly interconnected and understanding the dynamics that inform the securitization of these economic interactions is a fundamental exercise to improve our comprehension of changing global dynamics. The theory of securitization of non-traditional security issues (NTS) provides an excellent explanatory tool to unpack how global actors are changing the way in which they look at economy. For example, the debates about the theory contribute to our understanding of how threats in the economic sector tend to be characterized by long-term implications rather than immediate repercussions and guided by a logic of risk rather than of an existential threat.
This chapter argues that the international order shows tangible signs that it is moving towards the return to bloc politics with the strengthening of a Western bloc and the potential rise of an Eastern bloc. While the Western bloc is a cohesive yet small entity, which has realized since the war in Ukraine that much of the world is unpersuaded by its narrative, the ‘political East’ could potentially represent a greater number of people, but it is unlikely to achieve a level of political cohesion similar to the one seen in the transatlantic region in the post-Second World War era. Part of the issue, it is argued, is the lack of a recognized leader in Asia and the fact that China is not keen to make formal alliances. Such a scenario dangerously reinforces a security dilemma at a time when the US and China appear to be developing irreconcilable narratives about world politics.
The purpose of this chapter is to unpack the geopolitical impact of interdependence on US–China relations and explore how this is the source of both tensions and deterrence. Ultimately, this demonstrates that interdependence is not a harmonious relationship but is characterized by relations of power. Furthermore, the first part of the chapter shows that interdependence between the US and China is uneven, to the extent that in some areas the US leads while in others China does.
Considering this situation, the chapter puts forward the argument that the idea of limiting interdependence or even pursuing decoupling between the US and China has been, to varying degrees and in different ways, one possible option pursued by both governments throughout the 2010s. This is particularly apparent in the case of the US, but also, more tacitly, with China.
