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Building Fortress Europe Economic realism, China, and Europe’s investment screening mechanisms
(2023)
This thesis deals with the construction of investment screening mechanisms across the major economic powers in Europe and at the supranational level during the post-2015 period. The core puzzle at the heart of this research is how, in a traditional bastion of economic liberalism such as Europe, could a protectionist tool such as investment screening be erected in such a rapid manner. Within a few years, Europe went from a position of being highly welcoming towards foreign investment to increasingly implementing controls on it, with the focus on China. How are we to understand this shift in Europe? I posit that Europe’s increasingly protectionist shift on inward investment can be fruitfully understood using an economic realist approach, where the introduction of investment screening can be seen as part of a process of ‘balancing’ China’s economic rise and reasserting European competitiveness. China has moved from being the ‘workshop of the world’ to becoming an innovation-driven economy at the global technological frontier. As China has become more competitive, Europe, still a global economic leader, broadly situated at the technological frontier, has begun to sense a threat to its position, especially in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. A ‘balancing’ process has been set in motion, in which Europe seeks to halt and even reverse the narrowing competitiveness gap between it and China. The introduction of investment screening measures is part of this process.
The Islamic State is arguably the most prominent Islamist insurgent group to have attracted increased international attention in recent years, although it first emerged in the late 20th century, and this is largely a result of its significant territorial conquests in Iraq and Syria and the proclamation of its own global caliphate in June 2014 (Tønnessen 2018: 60). While research on the Islamic State's ideology, propaganda, financing, military strategy, recruitment of foreign fighters, and use of the Internet and social media has been conducted extensively in a variety of disciplines, including political science, sociology, media science, criminology, Islamic studies, history, and many others, systematic and in-depth analysis of the Islamic State's rebel governance, though not entirely unexplored, has remained comparatively under-researched.
This thesis builds on the above-mentioned issues and employs existing insights and concepts from Rebel Governance to systematically examine the transformation of the Islamic State’s territorial control into functional governance. In addition, through a comprehensive analysis of Islamic State administrative documents, which are continuously contextualized using secondary literature, this thesis develops a comprehensive portrait of the Islamic State's rebel governance. The following research questions are consequently derived from this approach: in what ways did the Islamic State engage in rebel governance during the height of its territorial control in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017, and how can the utilization of concepts and insights from Rebel Governance, and the qualitative analysis of Islamic State administrative documents, improve our knowledge of the Islamic State's rebel governance and help to generate new insights into it?