Informal Governance in the US Investment Screening Regime
To defend its hegemonic position,the United States has in recent years continued to"arm itself"through multifaceted efforts to build its national strength.In terms of international investment,the US has further strengthened its national security review system to prevent key technologies from flowing into other countries,thereby defending its technological hegemony.However,such a practice has also put the US in a new institutional dilemma.On the one hand,strict investment review does help to ensure investment security,especially technological security;on the other hand,excessive security review can easily be reduced to a tool for specific interest groups to seek private interests,which not only weakens the US'open-market commitment,but also creates a negative demonstration effect,leading to the emergence of global investment protectionism,which is not conducive to the development of the US economy.To resolve the security-economic goal dilemma,the US government has actively enhanced the flexibility of its investment review through an informal governance mechanism.Domestically,the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US(CFIUS)has shared information privileges in the review process through the professional elite network and the informal consultation mechanism to reduce transaction costs for investors;externally,the US government has established the investment review coalition and diplomatic coordination mechanism to create identity privileges for investors from allied countries and increase the legitimacy of their investments to help them circumvent security reviews.Such informal and flexible institutional designing has helped the US to strengthen its own security capacities while continuing to present an open-market image to international investors.Informal governance is important perspective to understand the US'attempt to simultaneously resolve the dilemma of security and development.China can draw lessons from such practice and its academic community needs to pay more attention to such development.
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维普
