Global Competition and the Policy of Development Restraint: Regulatory-Institutional Dimensions of Strategic Rivalry

Abstract

The article proposes a theoretical interpretation of global competition as a process of structural reformatting of economic and technological conditions of development through changes in access regimes to resources, markets and technologies, as well as through the formation and competition of standards and regulatory and institutional regimes. On this basis, a conceptual distinction is made between competition and rivalry, which is interpreted as a specific regime of deployment of global competition under conditions of preservation, but strategic re-subordination of economic interdependence. The key analytical focus of the article is the policy of development containment, which is conceptualized as a systemic geoeconomic and regulatory and institutional regime of influence aimed at the formation of long-term development asymmetries, rather than at situational correction of competitor behavior. Special attention is paid to the relationship of development containment with derisking policy and decoupling policy, which are interpreted as intermediate and borderline regimes of management of economic and technological interdependence, respectively. The article shows that the implementation of the policy of containment of development occurs through a combination of technological, financial, regulatory, institutional and behavioral mechanisms, including regulatory competition and the formation of transnational regulatory regimes that ensure the extraterritorial nature of influence.