University of Twente Student Theses
Contesting Contestation?! How the US and EU respond to BRI impact
Pommerenke, Birger (2024) Contesting Contestation?! How the US and EU respond to BRI impact.
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| Abstract: | The Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) functions as key Chinese echanism to contest Liberal International Order processes and paradigms, which challenges the power of its Western proponents. The research analyzes how the US and EU respond to BRI impact on the international order. International relations theory suggests that they employ distinctive countermeasures to balance Chinese power and preserve their global influence. Explaining these responses and their impact elicits understanding great power competition and international order change. A staged research design builds evidence by tracing BRI and rival development funding processes on program and project level towards pinpointing EU and US response strategies and outcome. The research identifies that China utilizes the BRI to transform economic into geopolitical power, and how it exploits accumulated interdependence in global networks to shift international order power distribution. It discovers that the US and EU engage in balancing patterns, but that the US balances more confrontative and holistic whereas the EU balances softer and more issue-oriented. By comparing BRI patterns with US and EU responses, the research uncovers strategic differences concomitant to serve varying targets and program logics, but identifies similarities in pursuing geoeconomic output and its trickle-down effect on global power. It distinguishes development funding regarding projected efficiency and impact on the international order, carving out that Chinese development funding short-term projects to prevail, but US and EU challenges mitigate its power output mechanisms and long-term project to contest its dominance. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Clients: | Unknown organization, L |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 89 political science |
| Programme: | European Studies MSc (69303) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/102776 |
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