Balancing Power without Weapons
State Intervention into Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions

This book focuses on the non-military military means through which states intervene to balance the economic and military power of other states. Also available as Open Access.

Ashley Thomas Lenihan (Author)

9781316632925, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2020

375 pages, 43 b/w illus.
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

Why do states block some foreign direct investment on national security grounds even when it originates from within their own security community? Government intervention into foreign takeovers of domestic companies is on the rise, and many observers find it surprising that states engage in such behaviour not only against their strategic and military competitors, but also against their closest allies. Ashley Lenihan argues that such puzzling behaviour can be explained by recognizing that states use intervention into cross-border mergers and acquisitions as a tool of statecraft to internally balance the economic and military power of other states through non-military means. This book tests this theory using quantitative and qualitative analysis of transactions in the United States, Russia, China, and fifteen European Union states. It deepens our understanding of why states intervene in foreign takeovers, the relationship between interdependence and conflict, the limits of globalization, and how states are balancing power in new ways. This title is also available as Open Access.

Introduction
1. A theory of non-military internal balancing
2. The numbers: a comprehensive look at the motivations behind
3. Unbounded intervention: the state and the blocked deal
4. Unbounded or overbalancing? An outlier case
5. Bounded intervention: mitigating threats to national security
6. Non-intervention and the 'internal' intervention alternative
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International economic & trade law [LBBM], Political economy [KCP], International trade [KCLT], International relations [JPS], Politics & government [JP]