Introduction

This chapter presents the main rationale for the book as well as its structure. It discusses several key issues examined in this collective volume. Because the main focus is the question of how foreign investments can be viewed as posing a challenge to national security it briefly examines how the role of economic interdependence in international relations is interpreted by various IR schools of thought, paying special attention to how these questions are understood by proponents of the liberal-institutional school and by the advocates of the realist approach to international relations. In addition, it also examines the reasons why some special measures have been introduced to monitor foreign investments and how to understand the issue of securitization in this context. This chapter also presents the authors of the single chapters and the structure of the book.