"Non-Decision Decisions In The Huawei 5G Controversy" - By CWP Alum Alanna Krolikowski & Todd H Hall
The Chinese company Huawei has presented the governments of several middle powers with a policy dilemma. On the one hand, Huawei’s affordable 5G network technology is attractive to telecommunications operators in these countries, which do not have domestic producers of this equipment. On the other hand, the U.S. government and intelligence agencies in other countries maintain that Huawei gear presents intolerable network security risks, a charge that the Chinese government and Huawei forcefully reject as they insist Huawei deserves access to foreign markets. Facing the question of whether and how to allow the installation of Huawei’s 5G equipment in their domestic networks, the governments of Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany have been caught between the competing demands of the two rivalrous superpowers and faced internal divisions among communities of government experts. At first glance, Japan, the UK, and Germany each appear to have responded to the Huawei dilemma in a different way. The Japanese government moved quickly and without formal announcement to exclude Huawei from its market, while publicly denying a ban. The UK government initially allowed Huawei to supply some of its national 5G infrastructure, but then reversed itself to ban the company’s equipment outright after a U.S. regulatory change. The German government has yet to officially ban Huawei, but has taken successive steps to curtail the Chinese company’s continued involvement in its domestic networks. In spite of their apparent differences, the three national responses to the Huawei dilemma share a fundamental commonality: all amount to “non-decision decisions” on the question of whether and how to allow Huawei to supply domestic 5G networks. That is, in one way or another, each government avoided making an explicit, definitive, and singular policy decision on the issue. After developing the concept of a “non-decision decision,” we explain why these maneuvers are not isolated responses to a specific policy conundrum, but may presage a mode of middle power coping with competing demands from two increasingly rivalrous superpowers.
Find the article here: Non-Decision Decisions in the Huawei 5G Controversy Policy in Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Alanna Krolikowski focuses her research on China-U.S. relations in strategic high-technology sectors. Her doctoral dissertation examines trade and technical cooperation between the two countries in commercial aircraft-manufacturing and civil-commercial space. During her time in the program, she will develop this project to examine bilateral relations in other high-technology sectors.
Alanna holds a PhD in political science at the University of Toronto. She has conducted research in Beijing and at several other sites across China as a visiting scholar in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and in Washington, DC, as a visiting scholar in the Space Policy Institute of The George Washington University. Alanna graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours from McGill University and has a Master's degree from the University of Toronto.
Prof Hall earned his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2008 and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton and Harvard, as well as visiting scholar appointments at the Free University of Berlin, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the University of Tokyo. Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Prof Hall held the position of Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto (2010-2013). Research interests extend to the areas of international relations theory; the intersection of emotion, affect, and foreign policy; and Chinese foreign policy. Recent publications include articles in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Political Psychology, Political Science Quarterly, and Security Studies. Prof Hall has also published a book with Cornell University Press, titled Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage, which was recently named co-recipient of the International Studies Association's 2016 Diplomatic Studies Section Book Award.
Photo Credit: By Huawei - [1], Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61387173
