Infrastructures of globalisation. The EU's strategies in the global competition for economic expansion and geo-economic control.

• Applicants: Dr. Joscha Abels; Professor Dr. Hans-Jürgen Bieling
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 526359979

Infrastructures form the material basis of globalisation, yet they are technically vulnerable and politically contested. Conflicts over infrastructure are currently on the rise against the backdrop of global competition between the US, China and the EU. Our project contributes to an ‘infrastructural turn’ in International Political Economy by examining shifts in EU infrastructure policy, which is increasingly oriented towards the control of globalization-relevant infrastructures. The project explores why this reorientation finds its expression in divergent strategies in different infrastructure fields. Our theoretical approach comes from a political economy perspective. Infrastructures are understood as large-scale technical systems in which social and technical aspects are mutually dependent. They consist of material, regulatory, and practical dimensions that are subject to social negotiation and have distributive and power-political implications. We assume that the EU's infrastructure policy strategies are preceded by a condensation of interests at the European level, which is determined by three central factors: the specific mode of economic pressure, including infrastructural dependencies and external influence, the constellation of interests of the member states and European companies, and discursive design logics. These factors determine the possibilities of alliance-building in the EU and thus of infrastructure policy decisions. Accordingly, we derive four causal hypotheses, which we empirically test through a comparison of reconstructive case studies. In the fields of transport, renewable energies, and data communication, we focus on key initiatives (e.g. the Trans-European Transport Networks TEN-T, the EU Hydrogen Strategy, the data infrastructure GAIA-X) and related condensation points. In addition to existing reports and research literature, we generate and evaluate data from official and internal documents as well as semi-structured interviews with relevant actors from the EU system, national ministries, companies, industry associations, trade unions and civil society. Based on the variance in case selection, we expect to arrive at generalisations about the formation process of EU infrastructure policy and to set these in relation to geo-economic shifts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants