Building a hidden investment state? The European Investment Bank, national development banks and European economic governance
本文通过追踪欧洲投资银行自1980年代末以来的制度创新与网络形成过程，揭示其如何成为欧洲联盟增强投资能力的核心，并指出这构成了一个隐形的欧洲投资国家的雏形。
The European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe and the enduring economic crisis has brought state-owned development banks again to the fore of public and scholarly debate in Europe. This article proposes to place these banks’ activities and recent institutional co-operation in the context of European integration and assumes a historical perspective on European economic governance and development banking. Most importantly, it argues that the European Investment Bank has become a centre of gravity in long-standing political attempts to increase the investment firepower of the European Union. Based on detailed process-tracing analysis through publicly available data and interview material, the article delineates a gradual process of institutional innovation and network formation that advanced since the late 1980s and culminated in recent post-crisis policy processes. The contemporary visibility of development banking in Europe, we conclude, follows from these and is representative of a nucleus for a – somewhat hidden – European investment state, whose reach and stability, however, is yet to be determined.