Sophie Meunier

Sophie Meunier
Princeton University | PU · Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

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109
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Publications

Publications (109)
Article
Heightened geopolitical tensions and the growing securitization of economic exchange over the past decade have prompted many countries to adopt new geoeconomic tools. Long resistant to this geoeconomic turn, the European Union (EU) has since 2017 created a panoply of innovative policy tools that blend trade and investment with essential security co...
Article
This paper asks what explains the creation and comparative features of national Investment Screening Mechanisms (ISMs) in Europe. After providing a brief history and definition of ISMs, we provide descriptive patterns about the similarities and differences in the investment screening features of national ISMs in EU member states. We then explain di...
Article
Since the 2008 financial crisis, many advanced industrialized economies, while eager to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), have also implemented or tightened investment screening mechanisms (ISMs), which empower governments to restrict foreign takeovers. ISMs, at the nexus between international political economy and international security, ar...
Article
Full-text available
What determines national preferences for institutionalizing foreign direct investment (FDI) screening? Over the past decade, advanced economies worldwide have tightened their national investment screening mechanisms (ISMs). In March 2019, the European Union (EU) adopted its first common FDI screening framework. This article explores variations in M...
Article
Ensuring fair competition has long been a core pillar of the European Union (EU). In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, the EU has diverted significantly from its traditional commitment to market-based competition, notably in state aid and foreign subsidies. This article explores change and continuity in post-Covid-19 European competition...
Conference Paper
What determines national preferences for institutionalizing FDI screening? Over the past decade, advanced economies worldwide have tightened their national screening mechanisms for foreign direct investment (FDI). In March 2019, the European Union (EU) adopted its first common FDI screening framework. Based on extensive interviews with high-level E...
Chapter
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Citizenship and residence by investment is a fast-growing global phenomenon. As of 2022, more than a third of all countries in the world offered paths to membership in exchange for a donation or investment into their economies. Yet we know little about how these programmes operate and debates in academia and the wider public are often misinformed b...
Book
This new version of a leading textbook on French politics offers expert analysis of recent national and international events, discussing their significance for France itself as well as for Europe and the wider world. It covers a wide range of current challenges facing the country under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron and considers how issues such...
Article
This article examines a particular instance of backlash against economic globalisation – the screening of foreign direct investment in the United States. Although most foreign direct investment is welcome in the United States, specific transactions have aroused suspicion and triggered political backlash by Congress. In fact, successive episodes hav...
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Negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) and for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada have provoked massive mobilization throughout Europe, both on the streets and online. Yet France, long at the epicenter of anti-...
Article
After the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) triggered massive public mobilization in the European Union (EU), literature emerged on the novel ‘politicization’ of trade in Europe. To be sure, public salience was high around the TTIP negotiations. However, public salience over EU trade and investment negotiati...
Chapter
The phenomenal story of China’s ‘unprecedented disposition to engage the international legal order’ has been primarily told and examined by political scientists and economists. Since China adopted its ‘open door’ policy in 1978, which altered its development strategy from self-sufficiency to active participation in the world market and aimed at att...
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Andrew Moravcsik has long argued that the EU is the world's second superpower, albeit a quiet and overlooked one. This article explores how the EU behaves as a global power, and how the illiberal turn may diminish it. We present Moravcsik's four core claims about the EU as the second superpower using the lens of Liberal Intergovernmentalism. We arg...
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The 2009 Lisbon Treaty transferred the competence over Foreign Direct Investment policy from the national to the supranational level. This article analyses the impact of this transfer on the content of international investment agreements and, more broadly, the shape of the investment regime complex. Is the competence shift expected to have an indep...
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Perceptions of the United States in European public opinion greatly improved around 2008, while perceptions of China simultaneously deteriorated. The Transatlantic and Sino-European relationships stem from radically different historical contexts. Yet could the image of China and the image of the U.S. be related in the eyes of Europeans? This paper...
Article
Is France still relevant? Asking this provocative question in honor of the late Stanley Hoffmann's lifelong commitment to French studies, I examine the contemporary role of France in international affairs, in Europe, and in globalization. The article then analyzes the structural reasons for these shifts in relevance, as well as the possible politic...
Chapter
This chapter examines the determinants of the European Union's trade power as well as the contribution of trade policy to the power of Europe in the international system. It first considers how the EU acquired and expanded competence to represent the member states in trade policy, from the Common Commercial Policy in the Treaty of Rome to trade pol...
Article
How are policy competences allocated between different actors? This article contributes to the literature on institutional development through an in-depth case-study of the conditions under which the competence over the negotiation of agreements on foreign direct investment (FDI) was transferred from the national level to the European Union (EU) in...
Article
The 2009 Lisbon Treaty transferred the competence over Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy from the national to the supranational level. This article analyses the impact of this transfer on the content of international investment agreements and, more broadly, the shape of the investment regime complex. Is the competence shift expected to have an...
Chapter
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a slim and temporary bailout fund created by the European Union in May 2010 to quell a growing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, became the foundation for a permanent, more powerful institution, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), adopted in March 2011. Did the creation of the EFSF constrain poli...
Chapter
Virtually non-existent five years ago, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) into Europe has surged spectacularly in recent years in an international context of declining FDI globally. While the stock of Chinese FDI in Europe is still minuscule, the flows show the rapidly growing interest of Chinese companies in being present in Europe, both thro...
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Full-text available
The European Union (EU) project of combining a single market with a common currency was incomplete from its inception. This article shows that the incompleteness of the governance architecture of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was both a cause of the euro crisis and a characteristic pattern of the policy responses to the crisis. We...
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Under what conditions does the internal cohesiveness of the European Union (EU) determine its external effectiveness? In a first step, this introduction probes the frequent assumption that the more cohesive the EU presents itself to the world, the more effective it is in achieving its goals. The empirical contributions to this collection, which ran...
Article
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For more than 50 years, the European Union (EU) was not in charge of international investment agreements; its member states were, and they negotiated more than 1,200 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with third countries. This lack of internal EU cohesiveness created costs for Europe, notably in terms of bargaining leverage over market access an...
Article
Though still a small percentage of the total stock of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) present in European countries, FDI coming from China has risen dramatically in the European Union (EU) since 2009. This introduction to the special issue on “The Politics of Hosting Chinese Investment in Europe” examines the political fears aroused by this recent...
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This article explores the political challenges posed by the recent influx of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into the European Union (EU), which has become in 2011 the top destination for Chinese investment in the world. The central political question facing European states welcoming the influx of Chinese capital is whether this is...
Article
Full-text available
Virtually non-existent five years ago, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) into Europe has surged spectacularly in recent years in an international context of declining FDI globally. While the stock of Chinese FDI in Europe is still minuscule, the flows show the rapidly growing interest of Chinese companies in being present in Europe, both thro...
Book
Developments in French Politics 5 provides a systematic assessment of French politics following the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Bringing together an entirely new set of specially-commissioned chapters, its central theme is whether the discourse of reform - initiated by Sarkozy - has been translated into tangible change. (Publishe...
Article
Full-text available
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a slim and temporary bailout fund created by the European Union in May 2010 to quell a growing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, became the foundation for a permanent, more powerful institution, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), adopted in March 2011. Did the creation of the EFSF constrain poli...
Article
This is a book about how processes of political representation work, whom they represent, and how they develop over time. We think of these as processes in which interests are formed, given a voice within organizations and polities, and influence the decisions of governments. As such, these processes are at the heart of how democracies are organize...
Book
How has the process of political representation changed in the era of globalization? The representation of interests is at the heart of democracy, but how is it that some interests secure a strong voice, while others do not? While each person has multiple interests linked to different dimensions of his or her identity, much of the existing academic...
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The financial crisis that erupted in September 2008 seemed to confirm all the worst stereotypes about the United States held abroad: that Americans are bold, greedy, and selfish to excess; that they are hypocrites, staunch defenders of the free market ready to bail out their own companies; and that the US has long been the architect and primary ben...
Article
Do political tensions harm economic relations? Theories claim that trade prevents war and political relations motivate trade, but less is known about whether smaller shifts in political relations impact economic exchange. Looking at two major economies, we show that negative events have not hurt U.S. or Japanese trade or investment flows. We then e...
Article
Protection for Exporters: Power and Discrimination in Transatlantic Trade Relations, 1930–2010 by DuerAndreasIthaca: Cornell University Press, 2010 - Volume 10 Issue 2 - Sophie Meunier
Article
Globalization and Americanization have often been intertwined and interchanged in the French political discourse. This article explores whether and how the election of Sarkozy, and then of Obama, are transforming this equation. The French obsession with globalization and Americanization was temporarily appeased at the time of the 2007 election, whi...
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Two alternate visions for shaping and explaining the governance of economic globalization have been in competition for the past 20 years: an ad hoc, laissez-faire vision promoted by the United States versus a managed vision relying on multilateral rules and international organizations promoted by the European Union. Although the American vision pre...
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Globalization - defined here as the increased flows of goods, services, capital, people, and information across borders - has been the source of many worries in Europe over the past decade, way before the global financial meltdown of 2008. In many European countries, globalization is more often perceived as a threat than as an opportunity. Some see...
Article
The French Fifth Republic at Fifty: Beyond Stereotypes. Edited by Brouard Sylvain, Appleton Andrew M., and Mazur Amy G.. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 297p. $85.00. Governing and Governance in France. By Cole Alistair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 249p. $86.00 cloth, $28.00 paper. - Volume 8 Issue 1 - Sophie Meunier
Chapter
Globalization is a source of endless debate in both popular and scholarly literatures. In the case of Europe, the causes and effects of globalization are difficult to isolate from those of the effects of deeper regional integration, often referred to as ‘Europeanization’. Since globalization has occurred in tandem with regional integration, it lead...
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Sophie Meunier, What is the Economic Impact of Transatlantic Tensions? In 2003, many calls were made in favor of an economic boycott both in the United States and in some European countries that disagreed with the Iraq war, but they had no serious economic consequences. Several factors can explain why trade was not sensitive to transatlantic tensio...
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Although culture is not at the heart of the policy agenda of the current French administration, it will likely be affected by the Sarkozy revolution. French culture seems to be in a state of crisis, as evidenced both by the end of its 'rayonnement' outside of France and by its diminutive focus on the producers instead of the consumers of cultural g...
Article
Through a study of the evolution of the concept of 'managed globalization' in trade, an idea conceptualized by EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy in 1999 and replaced by the new policy of 'Global Europe' in 2006, this article analyses whether the Commission has had an autonomous impact on the EU position in international trade negotiations, especial...
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The increasing density of international regimes has contributed to the proliferation of overlap across agreements, conflicts among international obligations, and confusion regarding what international and bilateral obligations cover an issue. This symposium examines the consequences of the complex of overlapping, parallel and nested agreements for...
Article
The European Union, the world's foremost trader, is not an easy bargainer to deal with. Its twenty-five member states have relinquished most of their sovereignty in trade to the supranational level, and in international commercial negotiations, such as those conducted under the World Trade Organization, the EU speaks with a "single voice." This sin...
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for their feedback. The German Marshall Fund of the United States provided generous funding during the drafting of this paper. The usual caveat applies. 2 ABSTRACT In recent years there has been a proliferation of international institutions, as well as renewed attention to the role that forum-shopping, nested and overlapping institutions, and regim...
Article
Resistance to change seems to be a deeply ingrained trait of French national character, and therefore traditional political accounts of France emphasize historical continuity. Yet, France has changed considerably in the past two decades, whether in economic, social, or political terms. This article reviews Changing France: The Politics That Markets...
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The EU is a formidable power in trade. Structurally, the sheer size of its market and its more than forty-year experience of negotiating international trade agreements have made it the most powerful trading bloc in the world. Much more problematically, the EU is also becoming a power through trade. Increasingly, it uses market access as a bargainin...
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The decade long trans-Atlantic banana dispute was not a traditional trade conflict stemming from antagonistic producers’ interests. Instead, this article argues that the banana dispute is one of the most complex illustrations of the legal and political difficulties created by the nesting and overlapping of international institutions and commitments...
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Globalization is often portrayed as a tidal wave that originated in the US and its policy of laissez‐faire liberalization. This paper argues, however, that globalization is not made only by striking down regulations, but also by making them. During the 1980s, French policy makers began to develop the doctrine of “managed globalization,” or what Wor...
Article
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 300-308).
Chapter
In economic relations, the EU has the capacity to exercise a global role on par with the United States. Yet the EU is not always able to effectively defend its interests. While the EU has firmly established its role as a global player in trade, it has faced difficulties in acquiring such a role in money and finance. Institutional legacies best expl...
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Why do the French appear as incorrigible anti-Americans? Why is France singled out as a bastion of systematic opposition to US policies? Anti-Americanism can be defined as an unfavorable predisposition towards the United States, which leads individuals to interpret American actions through pre-existing views and negative stereotypes, irrespectively...
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37.1 (2006) 113-115 The reasons why France has made headlines in recent years in the United States may seem incomprehensible to many Americans. How could a sheep-farmer who destroyed a McDonalds become a national hero? Why, if not out of ungratefulness, would the French government lead an international cabal to...
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[Summary]. The EU is a formidable trade power. While trade liberalization internally and externally have always been the essence of European integration, successive enlargements and the creation of the European Single Market have turned the EU into the world’s largest trade power. The EU is responsible for making trade policy through a complex deci...
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This article examines how globalization and Europeanization interact with each other, either in a centrifugal or in a centripetal way, to alter French politics. It analyzes how globalization has redefined domestic politics in France and it explores whether Europeanization has accelerated or hindered these transformations. It studies in turn the imp...
Article
The most common perception of France found these days in the American media is that of an arrogant country, whose international gesticulations are the last hurrah masking its inevitable decline into oblivion. The French have not yet come to terms with their lengthy collapse, which started with the devastation of World War I, continued with the humi...
Book
In August 1999 a forty-six-year-old sheep farmer name José Bové was arrested for dismantling the construction site of a new McDonald’s restaurant in the south of France. A few months later Bové built on his fame by smuggling huge chunks of Roquefort cheese into Seattle, where he was among the leaders of the antiglobalization protests against the Wo...
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Accusations of the European Union's (EU's) absence of political legitimacy find a particular echo in the area of external trade policy. Indeed, the combination of decade-old complaints about the EU's democratic deficit, the traditional delegation of trade-making authority to the most central level of government, and the now widespread protests agai...
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Let s unite. And the world will listen to us was an ad campaignused to mobilize the pro-European camp in France during the 1992referendum on the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. This slogansummarizes well one of the central rationales for trade integration: bypooling together their resources and creating a large market attractiveto foreign trad...
Article
France has become a worldwide champion of antiglobalization. France is home to José Bové—sheepfarmer turned McDonalds’ wrecker and, in the process, world famous antiglobalization activist. France is also home to ATTAC, a vocal organization originally designed to promote the so-called “Tobin tax” on financial transactions, but which has since become...
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[T]his paper evaluates the potential paths facing the EU as it projects the face of a single currency abroad. First, we analyze the need for a single voice representing the single European currency internationally. We highlight the different circumstances in which a currency needs a political voice in international affairs, and we disentangle what...
Article
What really defeated former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the French elections was his inability to talk straight on globalization.
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[Introduction by Mark A. Pollack, series editor]. IN DECEMBER 2000, THE European Council met under the leadership of the French Presidency to complete the negotiation of the Treaty of Nice, which was intended to reform the institutions of the Union and prepare them for eventual enlargement to the candidate countries of the east and south. The condu...
Article
Anti-Americanism and a stubborn Gaullist independence in foreign policy have often marked French political discourse. These traits are coming to the fore once again in France's wildly popular antiglobalization movement. Today, a complex mix of political, economic, and cultural reasons explains the French resistance to "Anglo-Saxon global capitalism...
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This article studies the determinants of international bargaining power in instances of trade negotiations between the European Union and the United States. The authors' central hypothesis is that an appraisal of the US–EU trade relationship requires an understanding of the ways in which ``domestic'' political institutions shape the bargaining beha...
Article
Although the Member States of the European Union (EU) have long since relinquished their power to act as autonomous actors in international trade negotiations, they have now chosen to regain some of their lost trade sovereign- ty. Neither the European Court of Justice's (ECJ's) 1994 opinion, nor the 1997 reform of the trade policy process at Amster...
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Was the European Court of Justice a key actor in the “relaunching” of European integration in the 1980s? This article examines the crucial political role that was played by the Court with its Cassis de Dijon judgment in the rejuvenation EC harmonization policy and the development of the Single European Act. The authors challenge the dominant view t...
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Is France’s traditional, reflexive anti-Americanism influencing its 2011 presidency of the G20? This paper argues that one might be tempted to read the objectives of the French G20 presidency, especially the proposed reform of the international monetary system, through an anti-American lens. But this is not the case for two reasons. First, evidence...
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Anti-Americanism, a general distrust of what the United States is and does, typically ebbs and flows in reaction to specific policy actions by the United States. However, in some countries, anti-Americanism peaks “out of sync” with the rest of the world and becomes an intense issue in the political debate even in the absence of any particularly egr...
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The global image of the United States severely deteriorated under the Bush administration and anti-Americanism, an individual attitude of fundamental distrust towards what America is and does, rose accordingly during the same period. Favorable views of the US started to improve in the world in 2008, but then the financial crisis hit in September 20...
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Democratic governance is a process in which choices are made and compromises forged between competing interests. But where do interests come from, how are they given a voice within polities, and what effects does interest intermediation have on the decisions of governments and other organizations? This paper undertakes two analytical tasks, each wi...
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for their feedback. The German Marshall Fund of the United States provided generous funding during the drafting of this paper. The usual caveat applies. 2 ABSTRACT In recent years there has been a proliferation of international institutions, as well as renewed attention to the role that forum-shopping, nested and overlapping institutions, and regim...
Article
Full-text available
for their feedback. The German Marshall Fund of the United States provided generous funding during the drafting of this paper. The usual caveat applies. 2 ABSTRACT In recent years there has been a proliferation of international rules, laws and institutional forms in world politics. This has triggered attention to the role that forum-shopping, neste...

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