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.
The rivalry between the US and China has expanded beyond the borders of either state to include competing for influence abroad. In the past, great power rivalry played out in both constructive and destructive ways in the Global South. However, the starting point of this chapter is that in order to understand the extent to which US–China rivalry impacts Africa in negative or positive ways, it is important to unpack the main areas and tools of influence that China has advantage over the US in. This chapter focuses its analysis on party-to-party diplomacy as an area of China’s foreign policy making in Africa, which is characterized by a relational approach centering mechanisms of social/human capital and professional network-building. This relational, network-building, approach is one of the fundamental differences between China’s approach in Africa and that of the US. The latter’s presence in the continent has mostly been focused on counterterrorism efforts while China has invested in relations with elites, government officials, and civil servants. Even more, as scholars of relationality and guanxi have argued, building social capital and putting a premium on expanding personal and professional networks between Chinese elites and their African counterparts are vital to understanding both the advantages and pitfalls of Chinese foreign policy making in Africa. Taking into account the global picture of China–Africa relations and building on robust scholarly work done in the field, this chapter starts from the observation that China’s presence (its influence and power) in Africa comes not only from Chinese investments in physical infrastructure buildings (as seen in the construction of ports, parliaments, and presidential palaces) but that it is also produced and manufactured through the creation of platforms for exchanging expertise which also serve as elite capture mechanisms.
The nature of US–China relations is changing and evolving in a new direction, with past differences becoming more acute while new areas emerge, such as the Arctic region, intensifying the US–China security dilemma. The rapidly changing climate and subsequent “opening” of the Arctic has given rise to China’s emergence as a major influence within the region. This chapter discusses how abrupt climate change, in combination with Chinese actions in the Arctic, could create unpredictable black swan events that undermine US and regional security. This chapter provides an analysis of China’s Arctic objectives using black swan and weak signal theories as well as the methodology of horizon scanning technique. Finally, it highlights possible scenarios of China’s impact on the Arctic in the future
