Pathways of Influence: European Think Tanks and the Shaping of the European Union's Defensive Economic Policy Toward China

Pathways of Influence: European Think Tanks and the Shaping of the European Union's Defensive Economic Policy toward China examines how European think tanks participate in, shape, and influence the European Union's policymaking toward China at a time of profound transformation in the global political economy.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the EU's approach to China has undergone a significant strategic shift. Growing economic competition, changes in global value chains, intensifying China-U.S. rivalry, challenges to the liberal international order, and renewed debates over European sovereignty have contributed to the gradual development of a more defensive European economic policy. This emerging policy architecture extends across trade, investment screening, industrial policy, technology transfer, intellectual property protection, and other areas central to the future of China-EU economic relations.

Rather than treating this transformation solely as the product of governments and EU institutions, Xin Hua turns attention to an important but often difficult-to-measure source of policy influence: think tanks. The book asks where European think tanks are situated within the EU's complex decision-making system, through what channels they transmit ideas and policy recommendations, and under what political and institutional conditions their influence becomes most consequential.

To answer these questions, the book develops an integrated theoretical framework combining the "field of power" perspective with John Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model. European think tanks are conceptualized as occupying a central position connecting the political, academic, media, and economic-financial domains. Their influence becomes particularly significant when changing political conditions, emerging policy problems, and available policy proposals converge to open a "policy window."

The study identifies thirteen distinct modalities through which European think tanks seek to influence policymaking, organized according to the duration and intensity of their influence. It further distinguishes two major pathways-the "Brussels Route," through which think tanks engage directly with EU-level institutions, and the "National Route," through which organizations based in member states influence EU policymaking via domestic political structures. This framework reveals a European think-tank system whose mechanisms of influence differ substantially according to institutional position, national context, resources, and proximity to EU decision-makers.

These mechanisms are explored through detailed case studies of three prominent institutions: Bruegel at the EU level, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in the United Kingdom. Through comparisons of think-tank recommendations and official EU policy documents, as well as analysis of conferences, research projects, collaborative networks, institutional relationships, and "revolving door" mechanisms, the book traces both direct and indirect forms of policy influence.