The European Global Gateway, Belt and Road Initiative and Interorganisational Diffusion; the EU mimicking a rival?
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2024-08-30
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en
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The field on institutionalisation of regional organisations has been growing and deepening. Interorganisational diffusion can occur when these organisations influence each other's institutionalisation. However, the EU, a strongly institutionalised RO, is often seen as a pioneer or shining image for other ROs but is often assumed to be uninfluenced itself. The example of the new EU initiative, the Global Gateway (EUGG), which attempts to bring all the EU's developmental policy under one roof, is theorized by commentators as being a direct response to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a similar developmental catch-all project. The EU seems to be influenced. This thesis attempts to show to what extent the Chinese initiative has driven EU policy makers to consider the EUGG and looks for a possible ‘China-factor’ in the creation of this project, both in the EUGG's institutional structure, but also in its implementation. It does so by using process tracing and interviews to create a clear image of the motivations and developments in the creation of the EUGG. In line with current literature on interorganisational diffusion, I have found indirect “recipient driven” influence and mechanisms to be strongest, with the competition mechanism dominating governance institutionalization, lesson drawing being at work in the implementation aspects of the initiative and finally normative emulation explaining the ‘branding’ and narrative of the initiative. Therefore, EUGG decisionmakers are influenced by the so-called ‘China factor’.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen