The state is back, and it means business. The project STASIS investigated the geography, economics, and politics of the adaptive strategies that state actors have adapted in a post-COVID-19 world. STASIS focused in particular on the reconfiguration of what academics, policymakers, and business commentators increasingly refer to as state capitalism, that is, the increasing reliance of governments on state enterprises, state-owned banks, state-sponsored investment funds, and other forms of state-controlled corporate entities, in order to achieve political and economic goals. Since the turn of the 21st century, state-owned enterprises, sovereign funds, and policy banks have vastly expanded their control over assets and markets. Concurrently, governments have experimented with increasingly assertive modalities of statism, from techno-industrial policies and spatial development strategies to economic nationalism and trade and investment restrictions. The prevalence of these state capitalist vehicles and instruments across political and geographical contexts and their policy relevance have been increasingly acknowledged over the past fifteen years. The project has focused in particular on (1) the transnational expansion of state-controlled corporate entities; (2) the multiplication of foreign investment screening mechanisms; (3) the proliferation of green industrial strategies. The project has conducted a study of the geographical political economic determinants of these modalities of state intervention and policymaking in light of the turbulent economic, geopolitical, and environmental transformations currently happening in the world. This research can inform citizens and the wider public, particularly concerning efforts to design a concerted, effective, equitable, and legitimate policy response to the “polycrisis”.
