Politics and International Investment

In this volume Witold Henisz provides readers with a new set of tools for assessing the extent of political and regulatory risk faced by investment projects in a given country. The author measures political risk directly by examining the structure of a nation's political institutions and the preferences of the actors that inhabit them. He also provides a critical analysis of the effectiveness of one common political risk mitigation strategy, partnering with a local firm. Neither democracy (Russia), political stability (Zaire, until recently) nor low country risk scores (Indonesia in 1995) are sufficient for investor security. The failure of each of these measures points to the need for more objective methods of measuring risk. After implementing tests to show the validity of a new measures, Witold Henisz analyzes the efficacy of partnering with local firms. The results of this analysis suggest that partnership will often introduce more hazards than it solves. This framework for measuring risk and analyzing the efficacy of risk-mitigating strategies could easily be extended to make it applicable on a project-by-project basis. Policymakers, investment managers, business professionals and scholars will find this book extremely useful.