The Politics of Foreign Direct Investment: An Interactive Framework

Recent scholarship on the political determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) point to the importance of a government's level of political capacity. Governments with high levels of capacity, it is argued, have the political power and economic resources to carry out preferred policy objectives. This line of reasoning, however, fails to provide insight into what these policy objectives are likely to include. The present study attempts to overcome this deficiency in the literature by modeling explicitly the interactive relationship between open market policy environments and relative political capacity (RPC). We argue that governments with open market policy frameworks and high levels of political capacity send clear signals of a political environment conducive to sustained profitability. Our empirical results confirm the expected interactive relationship, providing important insight into the expected effects of open market policies and political capacity.

现有针对外国直接投资（FDI）政治决定因素的研究均指出，政府政治能力水平至关重要。学界普遍认为，政治能力较强的政府拥有足够的政治权力与经济资源，能够落实其优先政策目标。但此类研究逻辑未能阐明这类政策目标的具体涵盖范畴。本研究通过对开放市场政策环境与相对政治能力（Relative Political Capacity, RPC）之间的交互关系开展明确建模，试图弥补现有文献的这一研究缺口。我们提出，具备开放型市场政策框架且政治能力较强的政府，能够释放明确信号，表明其所处政治环境有利于实现长期盈利。本研究的实证结果验证了预期的交互关系，为阐明开放市场政策与政治能力的预期影响提供了重要学术洞见。