Making Sense of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): Contested Theoretical and Conceptual Approaches

Since its inception in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been the subject of an intense debate. Approaches from international relations theory, foreign policy analysis, geopolitics, political economy, (inter)regionalism and development studies – to name just a few – have been applied to make sense of what amounts easily to the largest financial program, mega infrastructure drive and ambitious spending spree since the U.S. Marshall Plan for war-torn Europe after 1948. Although the exact details of the initiative have remained somewhat vague, the vast plans have triggered a veritable growth industry: scholars from various disciplines competing to make sense, interpret, and explain what is and what drives the BRI, putting forward an ever larger amount of theoretical and conceptual approaches. The paper sets out to discuss to what extent theoretical approaches are limited by the respective underlying ontological and epistemological constraints. In the social sciences, theories are inevitably bound by the perspective and the motives set out for theorizing. I will list and categorize some of the most often cited theoretical approaches and highlight their commonalities and differences. The claim is not to establish the most well suited approach but to illustrate that “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” and that various approaches lend themselves to the study of some of the most pressing empirical issues.