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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.
— Slavic Review
Babić argues convincingly through a range of case studies how states and markets are not that different in how they operate in a more open, interconnected and what we call heterarchical world political economy. In particular, he regards capitalism as being fundamentally underpinned, shaped, and made effective and profitable by states, i.e. that what we are dealing with is the transformation of state capitalism itself, capitalism created and shaped by states for their own purposes.
— European Review of International Studies
In this innovative book, Babić muscles aside the sterile and incorrect dichotomy between state and market and its related debate about the return of state capitalism in favour of a detailed empirical analysis of something new: the expansion of transnational state capital through foreign direct and portfolio investment. Transnational state-owned enterprises are increasingly powerful actors in the global economy.
— Herman Mark Schwartz, Professor of Politics, University of Virginia
This is illuminating and essential reading at a critical turn in world politics when geoeconomics is returning to centre stage. Babić accessibly – and based on a wealth of comprehensive data – guides the reader to see states as owners and investors in the global political economy, the strategies they employ vis-à-vis markets, and how all that matters in the current state of global capitalism and interstate rivalry.
— Naná de Graaff, Associate Professor in International Relations, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
This exciting new look at states and capital investment replaces the increasingly threadbare "standard" state–market dichotomy narrative and its "rise of state capitalism" trope with a more credible account of how both states and the firms they own and influence have integrated themselves into a "transnational agency space" that is fully compatible with globalization and private capital. This perceptive analysis of state responses to new opportunity structures of global markets presents both the big picture and the fine-grained, case-based data to support the theory.
— Geoffrey Underhill, Professor of International Governance, University of Amsterdam
Foreword by Erik Jones
1. Introduction: states and markets are different things – or are they?
2. A short history of the re-emergence of state capital(ism)
3. Transnational state capital in the global political economy
4. Strategies of the competing state: controlling strategies
5. Strategies of the competing state: financial strategies
6. Consequences: Covid-19, geoeconomics, climate change
7. Conclusion: states, markets and the future of globalization