The Rise of State Capital

In this innovative book, Babić muscles aside the sterile and incorrect dichotomy between state and market and its related debate about the return of state capitalism in favour of a detailed empirical analysis of something new: the expansion of transnational state capital through foreign direct and portfolio investment. Transnational state-owned enterprises are increasingly powerful actors in the global economy.

-- Herman Mark Schwartz, Professor of Politics, University of Virginia

This is illuminating and essential reading at a critical turn in world politics when geoeconomics is returning to centre stage. Babić accessibly – and based on a wealth of comprehensive data – guides the reader to see states as owners and investors in the global political economy, the strategies they employ vis-à-vis markets, and how all that matters in the current state of global capitalism and interstate rivalry.

-- Naná de Graaff, Associate Professor in International Relations, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

This exciting new look at states and capital investment replaces the increasingly threadbare "standard" state–market dichotomy narrative and its "rise of state capitalism" trope with a more credible account of how both states and the firms they own and influence have integrated themselves into a "transnational agency space" that is fully compatible with globalization and private capital. This perceptive analysis of state responses to new opportunity structures of global markets presents both the big picture and the fine-grained, case-based data to support the theory.

-- Geoffrey Underhill, Professor of International Governance, University of Amsterdam

Babić argues convincingly through a range of case studies how states and markets are not that different in how they operate in a more open, interconnected and what we call heterarchical world political economy. In particular, he regards capitalism as being fundamentally underpinned, shaped, and made effective and profitable by states, i.e. that what we are dealing with is the transformation of state capitalism itself, capitalism created and shaped by states for their own purposes.

-- European Review of International Stu