State-backed institutions and the electrification transition: Recoupling the UK automotive industry in an era of geoeconomic competition

Abstract

This article investigates how state-backed institutions facilitate renewed rounds of investment, i.e., recoupling, in industries undergoing technological transformation. While the global production networks (GPNs) literature has largely focused on processes that lead to the creation of strategic coupling, and more recently on cases of decoupling amidst geopolitical upheaval, recoupling processes, and the leading role played by state-backed institutions in them, remain underexplored. By empirically examining the least-likely country case of the UK, the article traces the evolution of state-backed institutional support for the UK automotive industry, and then analyses the cases of Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK and Jaguar Land Rover to identify the mechanisms and roles performed by state-backed institutions within upgrading alliances to secure repeat investment as part of the automotive sector’s electrification transition. The article argues that innovation-supporting state-backed institutions, increasingly driven by geoeconomic competition, act as correctors of network failures to enhance the competitiveness of the investment sites that lead firms are considering as part of technological transformation.