Naná de Graaff

• Associate Professor of Political Science
• Professor (Associate) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Amid increasing geopolitical tensions between Western powers and China over the alleged state-capitalist nature of Chinese corporate internationalization, European governments have introduced a set of political measures tightening their trade and investment regimes on grounds of national security and economic competitiveness. This article analyzes...

Research on international business presents ‘liability of foreignness’ as a key factor in a Multinational Enterprise’s (MNE’s) operations, but it has not addressed ‘foreignness’ as a complex and dynamic phenomenon. Adopting an identity work perspective, this article examines ‘foreignness’ as social construct, studying how a Chinese MNE manoeuvres t...

Decades before Trump, US grand strategy was characterized by a strong continuity of what we call Open Door Globalism consisting of the following: (1) a constant drive for economic expansionism and the (dogmatic) belief that this expansionism is indispensable for US prosperity; (2) a commitment to open markets, and (as since 1945) the promotion of l...

The chapter concludes our study by offering a comprehensive and systematic explanation of what we have argued has been Trump’s remaking of American grand strategy. Adopting an original elite-theoretical perspective grounded in a Critical Political Economy approach, our core argument has been that we can explain the Trumpian shift away from America’...

Academic literature on the Trump phenomenon has sought to make sense of Trump, his administration, and his (foreign) policy. Scholarly arguments have concentrated on the extent to—and the manner in which—US foreign policy under Trump has really constituted a significant break, or if there was indeed more continuity but very often without explicitly...

Placing the Trump phenomenon within a changing global and domestic context, this chapter analyses how in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and amid an ongoing global power shift Obama failed to successfully address the contradictions of neoliberal globalization and overcome the limits of Open Door Globalism. A political entrepreneur like...

Changing context alone cannot explain the shifts in US foreign policy. We also need to analyse the actual foreign policy-makers interpreting and acting upon this changing context as based upon their ideas, worldview and interests. This chapter maps and analyses the social networks of the administration’s top foreign policy-makers, to identify the s...

By analysing both the rhetoric and the evolving practice of Trump’s foreign policy, this chapter shows how Trump’s foreign policy-makers remade Open Door Globalism. While the discursive rupture was rather immediate, from the second year of his term, as his team became more “Trumpist”, this developed into a more radical break. We first sketch the co...

The Covid-19 crisis has once again brought the role of the state in the capitalist economy to the fore. Rather than viewing this as a ‘return of the state’, this article conceptualises the current dynamic in terms of a reconfiguration of the roles the state plays, distinguishing between a market-creating, a market-correcting, a market-intervening,...

Chinese investments into Europe have been growing prodigiously in the past decade and are increasingly the subject of controversy. However, while a lot of empirical data and analysis are available on the flows and stocks of these investments, we still know very little about the loci of corporate power and control behind them. This article focuses o...

In recent years Europe has become a primary focus for Chinese investment. In the context of the rolling out of Chinese government plans such as its Belt and Road Initiative and ‘Made in China 2025’ industrial strategy, and the fact that many Chinese companies are either controlled or influenced by the Communist Party, major consequences for Europe'...

In a time of great uncertainty about the future and resilience of the liberal world order this Forum focuses on China’s rise and interplay with the foundations of that liberal order. The key question is the extent to and variegated ways in which China - with its (re)ascendance to power and potential global leadership – is adapting to and perhaps ev...

The presidency of Donald Trump – often framed as a result of a populist revolt against the elites of Washington and Wall Street – and his apparent break with the postwar liberal internationalist foreign‐policy elite consensus, has raised fundamental questions about the future of elite power in the USA and the implications for its global role. As es...

Within the debate of China’s rise and its implications for the liberal order this research focuses on China’s global posture through its transnationalizing firms and capital. On the basis of a detailed and systematic mapping and network analysis of a novel database on China’s largest firms, across a variety of sectors and ownership types, and their...

The future of liberal internationalism will be influenced increasingly by the re-emergence of China as a major power on the world stage and by the way the United States is reacting to China's growing influence. In this article, we discern three possible scenarios: one of inevitable conflict, one of gradual co-optation and a hybrid scenario of coexi...

The rise of Chinese ‘state capitalism’ such as expressed by the global expansion of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has been met with substantial suspicion on the part of the Western corporate and political establishment—including among Washington’s policy-making elite. The underpinning claim that the rise of SOEs would impair market mechani...

Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, Obama’s economic recovery strategy pursued in the wake of the global financial crisis turned out to be aimed above all to restoring the confidence in financial markets and, in line with a long-standing drive to create a global Open Door for American capital, a renewed effort at opening yet more foreign markets. Th...

The corporation has become an increasingly dominant force in contemporary society. However, comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the concept of the corporation is often restricted, or limited to one disciplinary approach. This handbook brings together the cutting-edge scholarship, expertise and insight of leading scholars in a wide range of discipli...

This book presents a novel analysis of how US grand strategy has evolved from the end of the Cold War to the present. Developing its own theoretical framework and offering a rich and rigorous empirical analysis based on extensive primary it provides an integrated analysis of both continuity and change. The book argues that the post-Cold War America...

This paper investigates the patterns of transnational investments and alliances of Chinese state-owned oil companies since the mid-1990s and the social networks of their directors, taking the case of cnpc and its listed subsidiary PetroChina as the example. Using Social Network Analysis, I will map how the oil companies and their directors are embe...

This article seeks to explain both the continuity and the changes in US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War by adopting a critical political economy approach that focuses on the social origins of grand strategy-making. Systematically seeking to link agency and structure we analyze how grand-strategy makers operate within given social conte...

Noting an apparent 'return' of the state this article analyzes the rearticulation of state-capital relations in the context of the current global crisis. Departing from the notion that capital and state are internally related, we distinguish four roles that the state can play with respect to capital accumulation and on that basis examine to what ex...

This article theorizes the broader rearticulation of state power within the global energy order-signified by the resurgence of resource nationalism and the expansion abroad of state-owned non-Western energy corporations-alongside the persistently widening and deepening transnationalization of the global energy order. This is argued to be rooted in...

This article analyses the US state-capital nexus at the heart of an American imperialism currently reaching its limits. In a first part we argue that the US state has consistently sought to promote and facilitate the global expansion of US capital, indicating a tight coupling between the two. Indeed, this so-called Open Door imperialism has been sh...

This article analyses oil elite formation in light of the wider transformation that is taking place in the global oil order due to the rise of powers from the Global South, including Russia: in particular, the expansion and integration of the state-owned oil companies into the global oil market. This is done by analysing the networks that the direc...

Some time before the financial crisis hit the global political economy, emanating from the very epicentre of the neoliberal heartland, a development had manifested itself within the global energy sector that was widely perceived to challenge its neoliberal structure. This development was mainly characterized by the re-emergence of resource national...

A cursory reading of the confidential US diplomatic cables thus far released by Wikileaks appears to confirm two notions about the nature of US power in the current world order that we also find in some of the recent literature. First, that after the end of the Cold War the US has succeeded in creating a truly global empire, which it proactively se...

Seeking to explain the changes — within underlying continuities — that have taken place in US geopolitical strategy since the early 2000s, this article analyses the dialectical interplay between political agency — in turn linked to specific social forces — and changing structural conditions within the global political economy. Geopolitical strategy...

Seeking to explain the changes — within underlying continuities — that have taken place in US geopolitical strategy since the early 2000s, this article analyses the dialectical interplay between political agency — in turn linked to specific social forces — and changing structural conditions within the global political economy. Geopolitical strategy...

It is widely perceived that the rising influence of state-owned energy companies from outside the traditional triad (USA, EU, Japan) is transforming the structure of the global energy market and generating a new wave of resource-nationalism. There is, however, little empirical analysis of how this process has unfolded. Addressing this empirical gap...