Who Supports the Huawei 5G Ban? Advancing a Two-Level Ideational Approach in International Relations

The US allies’ decisions to ban or allow Huawei from building fifth-generation (5G) mobile broadband are significant to various actors, but their decisions have not been examined systematically. While related literatures point to relative bargaining power or domestic political constraints, I argue that strengths of pre-existing ideas, across national leader and national security institutional levels of analysis, help explain US allies’ positions. Specifically, I argue that the following three understandings are key: (1) China has aggressive intentions, (2) information and communications technology (ICT) system requires security, and (3) data privacy needs state protection. I argue that when the three key understandings are strong across national leader and national security institutional levels, the leader would likely adopt the Huawei 5G ban. On the other hand, when the three key understandings are weak across two levels, the leader would likely allow Huawei to partake in building 5G networks without tougher controls. I conduct a plausibility probe-based comparison of the decision cases of Australia and South Korea and find support for my hypotheses. The cross-national evidence calls for more attention to specific understandings—particular to action contexts—across at least two levels of analysis in explaining decisions of interest.