Investigating the ‘curious’ case of civil war and foreign direct investment: evidence from Sudan

Abstract

It is typically argued that civil war acutely inhibits inward flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the evidence is inconsistent and does not support the assumed negative relationship between civil war and FDI. Some studies suggest that FDI enters countries with internal armed conflicts unabated; others show that civil war economies exhibit strong increases in FDI during conflict. Underpinned by a liberal interpretation of war, this scholarship finds these trends to be surprising, counter-intuitive and curious, arguing that FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. In contrast, critical perspectives can provide insights by acknowledging that violence can facilitate economic processes such as FDI, creating a particular form of security and stability that can be conducive to FDI inflows. This article examines the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983War ( -2005, a country which exhibited strong increases in FDI during phases of the conflict. It is argued that particular types of violence perpetrated by the government's armed forces and pro-government militiasgroups which were sympathetic to the interests of key investors in the oil industry facilitated FDI in Sudan's oil sector during the 2000s to the detriment of large sections of the civilian population affected by the violence.

Remembering Hamidin Abdul Hamid: His Contribution to Africa-Malaysia Relations and the Development of African Studies in Malaysia

“…The Sudanese military removal of Bashir's regime was not sudden to the casual observer of African Studies (Bassil and Zhang 2021). Nonetheless, it shocked many past circles of PETRONAS corporates and former Malaysian diplomatic corps in Khartoum (Maher 2022). Within the wellrehearsed African politics and security literature, apart from the past civil war that gave birth to South Sudan, the Darfur genocide and his Islamist rhetoric of dictatorship, patronage politics, politics of the belly, and personal rules ranked Bashir together with Gaddafi of Libya, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and other infamous African despots and adversaries against democratic reforms and transparency (Bayart 2000;Nimako 2018;Taylor 2022;Peiffer and Englebert 2012).…”

Not gone away: how domestic terrorism impacts multinationals in foreign markets

“…According to empirical scholarship within international relationship (IR), and political science (PS), state terrorism benefits MNEs value chain activities (Maher, 2015). For examples, states have employed terrorism against local communities and activists to clear way for MNE extractive operations (Blakeley, 2009;Jackson et al, 2011;Holden, 2011;Maher, 2022). Whilst IB scholarship has not denied the issue of state terrorism (Harvey, 1993;Czinkota et al, 2004;Czinkota et al, 2005), it has yet to examine the functional relationship between state terrorism and IB, as well as the outcomes of As IB scholarship remains concerns with the "grand challenges" of society and continues to stress the importance of socially responsible IB (Doh, 2005;Buckley et al, 2017), we should explore this darker side of the IB-terrorism nexus.…”