Proxies, Partners or Opponents?

Abstract In the last decade, the Western world has experienced a conspicuous shift from market liberalisation to market interventionism aimed at addressing the security-related shortcomings of economic interdependence. There is a growing body of literature exploring this “geoeconomic turn,” including the increasing state efforts to mobilize firms for economic statecraft. Yet, our understanding of state-business relationships in the era of geoeconomics remains fragmented and requires systematisation. This paper offers a typology of market actors engaged by states in geoeconomic competition. We do this by developing an analytical framework for classifying the engagement of businesses based on the two-scale matrix, where one scale shows the degree of embeddedness of a state into firm control, whereas the other scale represents the fit between companies and states’ interests. As a result, we develop a comprehensive typology of market actors engaged by states in geoeconomic competition – across assigned purposes, state embeddedness and types of control.