《国际政治经济学》文献资料（Political Economy of Foreign Investment）International Investment and Colonial Control

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International investment and colonial control:a new interpretation Jeffry A.Frieden The relationship between international investment and military conflict has long been a theme of scholarly and popular debate.The most famous focus of discussion was the Hobson-Lenin thesis that modern colonial imperialism could be traced to overseas investments by finance capitalists,but there are many variants of the dispute.While these topics appear largely of historical interest,they also raise broad issues in international political economy. Inasmuch as colonialism is a particularly virulent form of interstate conflict (both among potential colonial powers and between colonizer and colonized), explaining it may help shed light on international conflict and cooperation more generally. This article recasts the relationship between international investment and colonialism in a more general context.Putative ties between metropolitan investment and colonial control are one subset of a problem associated with the monitoring and enforcement of property rights across national jurisdictions. Cross-border investment involves an implicit or explicit contract between the host country and the investor.The arrangements developed to monitor and enforce these contracts-from gunboat diplomacy to private negotiations-are varied institutional forms responding to different characteristics of the invest- ments and the environment.Colonialism is a particular,perhaps particularly noxious,form that the "resolution"of these quasi-contractual issues can take: the use of force by a home government to annex the host region and so eliminate the interjurisdictional nature of the dispute I would like to acknowledge the Social Science Research Council's Program in Foreign Policy Studies,the German Marshall Fund,and UCLA's Center for International Relations for supporting the research reported herein.I also thank Fred Halliday,Jack Hirshleifer,Stephen Krasner,David Lake,Peter Lindert,Lisa Martin,John Odell,Robert Powell,Ronald Rogowski, Richard Rosecrance,John Ruggie,Kenneth Thomas,Michael Waldman,and Mira Wilkins for helpful comments and suggestions;and Carlos Juarez and Roland Stephen for research assistance. Intemational Organization 48,4,Autumn 1994,pp.559-93 1994 by The 10 Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

560 International Organization This approach leads to two principal dimensions of variation in overseas investments expected to be associated with different levels of interstate conflict and the propensity for such investments to have been involved in colonialism. The first is the ease with which rents accruing to investments can be appropriated by the host country,or protected by the home country,by coercive means.Everything else being equal,the more easily rents are seized, the more likely the use of force by home countries.The second dimension is the difference between the net expected benefits of cooperation among home countries as compared with unilateral action by a single home country.This is a function both of the degree to which interinvestor cooperation facilitates monitoring and enforcing property rights to the investment and of the cost of organizing and sustaining such concerted action by home countries.All else being equal,the lower the net expected benefits of cooperation,the more likely are home countries to engage in unilateral action,including colonialism. Certain types of investments appear to have lent themselves more easily than others to protection by the unilateral use of force by home governments.This is especially true for investments with site-specific and casily appropriated rents, such as raw materials extraction and agriculture.For such investments,colonial control resolved inherent property rights problems that arose in its absence. This is not to say that these investments caused colonialism,for the reverse might have been the case-the greater security colonialism offered might have attracted disproportionate amounts of certain kinds of investments;it is, however,to argue for an affinity between certain cross-border investments and colonialism.I do not claim that these factors exhaust all explanation.Clearly geopolitical,technological,ideological,and other forces were important;but the sorts of differentiated economic variables discussed here often have been neglected in studies of colonialism.Further,their importance appears con- firmed by historical evidence. The first section reviews the long-standing dispute over colonialism and foreignt investment,reshaping it in more general terms.The next section goes on to redefine the analytical issues in the context of property rights and contractual problems inherent in cross-border investment and to explore the implications for the study of colonialism.The third section presents more specific hypotheses about the effects different sorts of overseas investments are expected to have on the attractiveness of colonial control (and vice versa)and about the likely distribution of types of investment among colonial and noncolonial countries.The fourth section examines rudimentary data about the relationship between different types of investment and different forms of rule, while the fifth section brings more qualitative historical evidence to bear on this problem.The final section summarizes the conclusions of this analysis and discusses its implications

Colonialism 561 Colonialism and international investment:the issues Debates over the role of foreign investment in confiict between investing and receiving societies and in conflict among investing countries have a long history.!Early in this century,Marxists and others carried on spirited polemics over the prospects for cooperation and conflict among advanced capitalist states in the context of dramatic increases in international investment and growing international strife (including World War I)that seemed to many to be tied to economically based colonial rivalries.2 The 1930s and 1940s gave rise to new debates over foreign investment and international conflict.3 Indeed,some of the impetus for the Bretton Woods institutions built during the early postwar years came from a desire to avoid problems associated with international investment that were perceived to have contributed to the political turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century.4 Elaborate plans to manage disputes among investing countries became superfluous,as such conflicts practically disappeared over the postwar period.5 Nonetheless,the topic remains interesting and important,for it involves enduring issues in international conflict and speaks to the relationship between international economics and politics. Unfortunately,the analysis of these issues is rife with confusing and often misleading arguments.Proposed explanations (independent variables)typi- cally are poorly specified;in fact,in the most prominent focus of the debate, they are close to meaningless.The things to be explained(dependent variables) similarly are poorly stated.Below,I try to reorganize both the independent and dependent variables to permit clearer analysis. 1.The most important recent contribution to the debate is Charles Lipson,Standing Guard Protecting Foreign Capital in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Berkeley:University of California Press,1985).Lipson raises issues similar to those discussed here.Though his explanatory argument differs,it is not contradictory to that presented in this article. 2.Lenin and John Hobson were the two best-known analysts of these problems.Apart from Lenin's pamphlet Imperialism:The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York:International Publish- ers,1939),a summary of his position is contained in V.I.Lenin,introduction to Imperialism and World Economty by Nikolai Bukharin (New York:International Publishers,1929),pp.9-14.An outstanding survey of Hobson's theoretical position can be found in Peter Cain,"f.A.Hobson, Financial Capitalism,and Imperialism in Late Victorian and Edwardian England,"Joumal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13 (May 1985),pp.1-27. 3.The two most influential studies were those by Herbert Feis and by Eugene Staley,who looked at previous experiences,especially with European overseas investments,as a guide to potential future arrangements.See Herbert Feis,Europe,the World's Banker 1870-1914 (New Haven,Conn:Yale University Press,1930);and Eugene Staley,War and the Privare Investor (Garden City,N.Y.:Doubleday,Moran,and Co.,1935). 4.On the Bretton Woods negotiations,see Richard N.Gardner,Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy in Cument Perspecrive (New York:Columbia University Press,1980);and Armand Van Dormael, Bretton Woods (New York:Holmes and Meier,1978). 5.Contrarily,such plans simply may have been extraordinarily successful so as to render the issue of conflict obsalete.This possibility does not accord with the widespread impression that Bretton Woods institutions did very little of what they were intended to do,and very little at all until the 1960s

562 International Organization Most controversy over colonialism and foreign investment has to do with the so-called economic theory of imperialism.5 The debate seems peculiar to the student of political economy,for it revolves around the simple question of whether economic considerations were important to colonial imperialism or not.As such it is not about an economic theory as normally understood but rather about the relative importance of the totality of economic concerns and the "contending"totality of noneconomic concerns,even though all scholars agree that both were present.This confusion is compounded by all sides in the debate.Supporters of the "economic approach"point to instances in which nationals of a colonial power made money as a result of colonialism,while opponents call upon examples of colonial possessions devoid of economic significance.If the question were whether colonialism was solely and entirely motivated by expectations of direct and measurable economic profits,this might be appropriate;inasmuch as this is manifestly not the question scholars ask,it is not. In general,an economic theory of political behavior tries to correlate different kinds of economic activity with different kinds of policy or political outcomes.For example,some common economic theories of politics hypoth- esize a relationship between firm and industry characteristics on the one hand and levels of support for trade protection,regulatory outcomes,or other government actions on the other.Typically,an economic explanation is not about the relationship between the economy and politics in general but rather about the relationship of a specific economic independent variable to a specific political or policy dependent variable.It is variation in the economic variable that is purported to explain corresponding variation in the political or policy outcome.If so desired,confrontation with noneconomic theories can then be made by seeing whether noneconomic variables outperform economic vari- ables in explaining outcomes;more commonly,scholars accept that economic and noneconomic factors are not mutually exclusive.Int any case,the appropri- ate test of a typical economic theory is not whether or not economic considerations matter,but whether they matter in the ways hypothesized by the theory in question.An economic theory of colonialism,in this context,would correlate particular kinds of economic activities with the likelihood of colonial rule. It is also useful to get a clearer sense than is usually provided in the debate over colonialism of what is being explained by contending theories.Colonial rule is but one possible outcome of relations between and among countries- 6.Influential statements or surveys of the positions at stake include Benjamin J.Cohen,The Question of Imperialism:The Political Economy of Dominance and Dependence (New York:Basic Books,1973);D.K.Fieldhouse,"Imperialism:An Historiographical Revision,"Economic History Review 14 (December 1961);David Landes,"Some Thoughts on the Nature of Economic Imperialism,"Joural of Economic History 21 (December 1961);and Joseph Schumpeter,"The Sociology of Imperialisms,"in Joseph Schumpeter,Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: Augustus Kelley,1951),pp.3-130

Colonialism 563 one value that the dependent variable can take.Its uniqueness is twofold.First, it involves the explicit or implicit use of force by the colonial power over the annexed region.Second,the relationship is exclusive;that is,the colonial power acts unilaterally and not in concert with other powers (and often explicitly to exclude them). To express the thing to be explained more generally,colonialism is simply one example of interstate interaction occurring along two dimensions.[For ease of exposition,I refer to potential colonial powers as "home countries" (that is,sources of foreign investment)and to potential colonized regions as "host countries"(that is,sites of foreign investment).The first dimension of variation is the extent to which a home country engages in the use or threat of military force in its relations with the host country.Variation along this dimension runs from military intervention at one limit to the absence of government involvement at the other.The second dimension is the degree to which home countries act in concert toward a host country.Variation along this dimension runs from unilateral and exclusionary action by a home country at one limit to cooperative multilateral action by many home countries at the other.Those so inclined might imagine a two-by-two matrix with the use of force (or conflict more generally)between home and host countries on one axis and conflict among home countries on the other.The four positions described here would occupy the four cells (home-host and home-home conflict is colonialism,home-host and home-home cooperation is peaceful multilateral negotiation,and so on),but there is no reason to believe that variation does not allow for a continuum of outcomes.In this context,colonialism (the unilateral use of force)is one possible outcome.Other potential outcomes include multilateral use of force,bilateral arms-length negotiations,or multilateral negotiations-and gradations in between. Other characteristics of home-country policy may well be of interest.For example,it may be important to understand the domestic distributional implications of a government's policy toward the foreign assets of its citizens, such as the subsidization of overseas investors by national taxpayers.It may also be important to understand the ways in which relations between home and host countries,or among home countries,are institutionalized at the international level.7 Other potential topics suggest themselves,but I focus on those mentioned above. In any case,the issues addressed here involve home-country conflict with host countries and conflict among home countries.These capture much of the theoretical debate and historical experience.Putting the two dimensions together covers everything from unilateral military intervention leading to colonial annexation,through multilateral intervention that preserves the 7.For a discussion of the analytical issues in the development of such international institutions, see Robert Keohane,"International Institutions:Two Approaches,"Intemational Suudies Quarterly 32 (December 1988),pp.379-96.See also Michele Fratianni and Johr Pattison,"The Econamics of International Organization,"Kyklos 35 (1982),pp.244-62

564 International Organization sovereignty of the host nation,to private bilateral or multilateral negotiations. This redefines the outcome of interest,so that colonialism is one of several possible results of home-home and home-host interaction;in other words,it describes variation in the dependent variable.The next step is to focus on the explanatory variable proposed,which is differing characteristics of interna- tional investment. The following section explores the impact of various kinds of international investments on the policies of potential colonial powers,up to and including colonialism.It ignores many other issues,such as investments among devel- oped countries,except where these impinge directly on the theme.The article also ignores potentially important noneconomic factors that might have affected colonial rule.I have done so only to delimit the problem in a manageable way;I certainly do not wish to deny the importance of other considerations,only to plead for the incorporation of certain economic concerns into explanations of a complex reality.Excluded from the analysis by design is consideration of military,geopolitical,technological,and a host of other factors.I have dealt with some of these in a limited way elsewhere;for now I focus on the economic nature of international investment.8 International investment,property rights, and international conflict The international politics of international investment are largely organized around two broad problems.The first is the desire of investors to monitor and enforce the host country's respect for cross-border property rights.The second is the degree to which different foreign investors engage in collective action to carry out these monitoring and enforcement activities. The security of property across borders is in essence a contractual problem. Overseas investment involves an implicit or explicit contract between the investor and the host state.9 This contract may commit a host government to 8.See Jeffry A.Fricden,"The Economics of Intervention:American Overseas Investments and Relations with Underdeveloped Areas,1890-1950,"Comparative Studies in Sociery and History 31 (January 1989),pp.55-80,which also presents some of the ideas contained in the present article. The facts that I exclude other potential explanatory variables from my analysis and that I do not weigh the large number of contending explanations are a problem only if there is reason to believe that one of the alternate explanatory variables is correlated with mine and may outperform it.One exception is the role of economic develapment,which is probably correlated with types of investment;indeed,in the essay cited above I suggest a complex interaction among development, foreign investment,and foreign intervention.In this context and more generally,it is nonetheless legitimate to argue for the validity of my hypotheses as part of a full explanation of the phenomena in question. 9.An explicit discussion of this concept,specifically in regard to sovereign lending,can be found in Vincent P.Crawford,Intematianal Lending,Long-ter Credit Relationships,and Dynamic Contract Theory Princeton Studies in International Finance,no.59 (Princcton,N.I.:International Finance Section,1987).Further references to this very large literature can be found therein

Colonialism 565 repay a loan,to allow a firm to mine copper,or to permit the establishment of a local branch factory of a multinational corporation.If the host government breaks the contract-by not servicing the loan,expropriating the mine,or closing down the factory-foreign investors have no direct recourse.This requires investors to devise some mechanism to monitor and enforce their property rights.In this sense home-country military force is one choice among a number of devices to protect overseas assets. All investors face contractual or quasi-contractual problems in the course of business;this fact is central to modern analyses of industrial organization.0 The existence of a state domestically does not solve the problem,for it is costly to recur to the court system.Investors come up with a variety of ways to overcome contractual problems,ranging from the use of forward markets through long-term agreements in which both parties make irreversible invest- ments (what Oliver Williamson terms"mutual hostages"),to vertical integra- tion. Regarding the security of property across borders as a problem in relational contracting directs attention to characteristics of the assets,product markets, and informational environment that affect the ability of the parties to monitor and enforce their contract.Variation in such contractual problems in turn gives rise to different organizational or political responses.2 In addition to underlying contractual questions,the need for investors to monitor and enforce host-country compliance can lead to problems of collective action.In many cases,of course,property rights can be secured on a purely individual basis so that there is no incentive for investor collaboration. All investors may have a common interest in ensuring stable rights to private property,but this does not mean that such stable rights must necessarily be provided to all investors.13 Each investor is first concerned about the investor's own property rights,and an investor can,in fact,benefit by receiving exclusive property rights.Where secure property rights can be supplied on a specific basis to specific investors,there is little reason for cooperation among investors. On the other hand,the protection of foreign property may be made substantially more effective if investors cooperate.Whenever the combined action of many investors reduces the cost of protecting their property to each 10.An infuential example of such an analysis with an explicit contractual emphasis is Oliver Williamson,The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York:The Free Press,1985). 11.I6id,pp.169-205. 12.The approach presented here is related to that of Keohane;see Robert O.Keohane,"The Demand for International Regimes,"fntemational Organization 36 (Spring 1982),pp.325-55. Keohane also relies on the relational contracting literature,especially as regards the role of institutions in reducing transactions costs,in his explanation of regime persistence. 13.In what follows I focus on property rights.The discussion could be extended to include many other policies,from taxation and tariffs to labor relations.In virtually all instances,the same tension between general and specific investor interests recurs.I emphasize property rights partly because they are in some sense primordial-without securiry of property few other policies matter-and partly because the general point can easily be broadened to other issues

566 International Organization investor,cooperation would be desirable to them.This might be the case,for example,when evaluating the host government's compliance with contractual commitments can be costly-such as when it is difficult to separate the impact of exogenous events from straightforward cheating.In this case,crucially important accurate information about the host government's actions and intentions serve all interested investors,and it is in the interest of all to cooperate in obtaining the information.Another example might be when the threat of sanctions by investors (or their governments)leads to host-country recognition of cross-border property rights to all(or a broad class of)foreign investors.The more investors(or countries)participate in the sanctions,the more effective they will be for all.14 However,the circumstances that can make cooperation attractive to inves- tors can also make it difficult.If the benefits of joint action accrue to larger groups of (or all)foreign investors,such protection may come to take on the characteristics of a public good.Under these circumstances,a host govern- ment's commitment to respect the property of foreign investors (or a class of foreign investors)is indivisible,inherently available to all investors (or alt members of a class of investors).When monitoring and enforcing compliance with quasi-contractual commitments to property rights serves a large class of (or even all)investors,there may be collective action problems associated with the provision of this public good.15 Because the public good would benefit a large group of actors,actors have an incentive to cooperate to help provide it; cooperation is hindered by the fact that noncooperators cannot be excluded from benefiting from the provision of the public good.16 The more the protection of property requires joint action to accomplish,the greater the potential gains from cooperation;but the more difficult collective action,the less likely such cooperation is to succeed.Where joint action by international investors to monitor and enforce property rights improves their welfare,the probability of successful cooperation is a function of free-rider problems.To summarize:cooperation among investors becomes more likely as the potential return to investor collaboration increases (i.e.,the more monitor- ing and enforcement are public goods).And as collaboration among investors becomes more likely,the easier it is to organize collective contribution to monitoring and enforcement.17 Emphasizing these considerations is not to 14.For an analysis of sanctions,see Lisa L.Martin,Coercive Cooperation:Explaining Multilatera! Economic Sanctions (Princeton,N.J.:Princeton University Press,1992). 15.For a discussion of monitoring and enforcement assurances serving as a welfare-improving public good,see Douglass North and Barry Weingast,"Constitutions and Commitment:The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,"Joumal of Economic History 49 (December 1989),pp.803-32. 16.This broad class of problems has,of course,been the subject of an enormous literature on strategic interaction,to which I allude only in passing here. 17.Jack Hirshleifer,"From Weakest-link to Best-shat:The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods,"Public Choice vol.41,no.3,1983,pp.371-86.Hirshleifer differentiates among different types of collective action problems that concern the provision of public goods in ways that are applicable to the present setting.In a"weakest link"context,supply is a function of the smallest

Colonialism 567 downplay the importance of other,noneconomic,elements;it is to argue for the anticipated political implications of these economic factors,all else being equal. Thus the two dimensions of variation in the characteristics of international investment that I expect will affect the probability that such investment will be associated with colonial rule may be summarized as follows:the first is the ability of the investment to be protected by force;the second is the degree to which monitoring and enforcing a host government's respect for foreign property has the character of a public good,and (if it does)the difficulties in overcoming collective action problems to supply the public good. International investment and conflict: analytical expectations The preceding discussion is only useful inasmuch as it leads to otherwise nonobvious analytical expectations.In what follows,I summarize features of cross-border investments and of the markets in which those investments operate,both of which I expect will affect the character of the monitoring and enforcement of international property rights and the degree of collaboration among international investors in pursuit of this monitoring and enforcement. In other words,variation in these factors should be associated with (1)variation in home-state use of force against a host state and(2)the degree of home-state cooperation over investments of this type.Once again,these should be taken as potentially contributory rather than necessarily competing variables in a complex explanation that includes a wide variety of economic,political, military,cultural,and other considerations.For my more limited purposes,the factors relevant to this evaluation of the use of force by and cooperation among investing countries can be grouped into the two categories described above and then can be applied to particular classes of investments Site specificity and the costs of physical protection Some assets can be more easily protected,and some contracts more easily enforced,by the use or threat of force than others.Put another way,the rents accruing to some assets can be more easily appropriated or protected by force than the rents accruing to other assets.To some extent,the appropriability of the asset and its income stream is related to the asset's specificity to a particular site or corporate network.For example,the income stream created by a copper mine is specific to the place where the copper is located.The mine,and the resource rents associated with it,can be seized by a host country with relative contribution,while in a"best shot"setting,it depends on the largest contribution.In the former case,Hirshleifer shows,the level of the public good provided will be much larger than in the latter

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