Eddie Ashbee looks at infrastructure plans and competition with China

In a new article, published in the Jadavpur Journal of International Relations, Eddie Ashbee considers the impact of competition with China on domestic policy debates in the United States. He looks at the infrastructural proposals put forward by the Biden administration in its early days which - in terms of size and scale - dwarfed plans put forward by preceding administrations. At the end of the day much of the plan crashed in Congress. Nonetheless, why did the White House feel it had even a chance? The answer, Eddie Ashbee suggests, is that competition with China has highlighted the weaknesses of American physical and human infrastructure. The article draws upon framing theory to argue that Biden could use concerns about China to frame his gargantuan plan in a very different way to Obama back in 2009. There is now much more of an impetus to address infrastructural issues in the US but, for the foreseeable future at least, bitter partisanship blocks a coordinated and focused policy response.


https://doi.org/10.1177/09735984221086157