A Bargaining and Property Rights Perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative: Cases from the Italian Port System

Drawing upon the bargaining power literature and property rights economics, this article explores how and why host country actors at different levels of governance influence foreign direct investment (FDI). Exploiting these analytical tools, it conducts a comparative case study analyzing four Chinese company attempts to enter Italian seaports. It finds there must be consistency in the distribution of rights among the various participants in the property relationship for a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) port investment to occur. Given this, Chinese investors must be attentive to the bargaining position and property rights of actors across multiple levels, space, and time.

This publication originally appeared as Cristian Luise, Peter J. Buckley, Hinrich Voss, Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, and Elisa Barbieri, “A Bargaining and Property Rights Perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative: Cases from the Italian Port System,” Journal of International Business Policy 5, (2022), pp. 172–193. Copyright remains with the original holders.