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.

现有关于外国直接投资（Foreign Direct Investment, FDI）政治决定因素的研究均表明，政府政治能力水平至关重要。有观点提出，具备较高政治能力的政府，拥有推行既定政策目标所需的政治权力与经济资源。然而此类研究逻辑并未阐释这些政策目标可能涵盖的具体范畴。本研究尝试通过显式构建公开市场政策环境与相对政治能力（Relative Political Capacity, RPC）之间的互动关系模型，弥补现有文献的这一不足。本研究认为，兼具公开市场政策框架与较高政治能力的政府，能够释放清晰信号，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互动关系，为理解公开市场政策与政治能力的预期效应提供了重要洞见。