The Business of Citizenship: Investment Citizenship Firms in Global Governance

ABSTRACT
 Since the 2008 financial crisis, more and more states have started to “sell” citizenships and residence permits to the global economic elite in return for investments. This trade is mediated by transnational firms in the investment citizenship industry, who help governments design and reform the programmes, and assist the wealthy in applying for them. The objective of this article is to explore the activities of these firms, that until now have been largely neglected in research. In order to understand their agency and the forms of power that they are able to exert, this article engages IR theory and sociological network theory on intermediaries. It is argued that investment citizenship firms take on two different intermediary roles at the same time, as regulatory intermediary and as broker. The article finds that the firms are sometimes able to amount a considerable power vis-à-vis state actors; and that they also contribute to the decoupling of the global elite from ties to precise localities, in the process also transforming the purpose of statehood. The investment citizenship firms are hence consequential actors in global governance, and their activities merit more research attention.


Introduction
A growing number of states now "sell" citizenships and residence permits to the global economic elite in exchange for investments. Although this practice is not strictly speaking new, it has boomed since the 2008 financial crisis, after which especially smaller states have begun to regard it as an important source of foreign investment. For extremely wealthy individuals, buying a citizenship or residence permit can be a way to secure market access, favourable tax regimes, visa-free travel and/or personal safety in times of war and conflict as well as natural disasters and pandemics.
There is now a growing scholarly literature on this subject. The focus of this research tends to be tilted towards either the supply or the demand side, that is, either on the states that put citizenship up for sale, or the individuals that make up the clientele on this market. Scholars investigate, for instance, what income levels and what original nationality that citizenship "buyers" tend to have, and what motivates them (Surak 2021;Harpaz 2019aHarpaz , 2019bHarpaz and Mateos 2019). Alternatively, and more commonly, they are concerned with the "selling" states, trying to determine their intentions and to investigate the consequences and effectiveness of their programmes, or to delve into moral philosophical questions attached to them (Džankić 2019;Surak 2016;Bauböck 2018;Gamlen, Kutarna, and Monk 2016;Krakat 2018;Mavelli 2018;Parker 2017;Ramtohul 2016;Carrera 2014;Tanasoca 2016;Shachar 2017;Hidalgo 2016;Boatcă 2015Boatcă , 2019Boatcă , 2021Grell-Brisk 2018;Joppke 2019;Abrahamian 2015).
But besides states and individual clients there is another important intermediary set of actors, that has so far not been awarded much research attention: the investment citizenship firms. 1 Such firms play several crucial roles. One is to process and pre-screen naturalisation applications, before passing them on to state authorities. The firms are also involved before the actual application, as they offer the prospective client advice regarding in which state to apply given their personal situation, wealth and interests. Some of them, notably the larger firms, cater not only to the elite clients but also to governments. In this role, they may be trusted to design programmes for investment citizenship, to run, improve and/or market them.
I argue that these firms are influential actors that merit more research attention. This article is a first step in the direction of uncovering their power in global governance. Global governance scholarship has long recognised the importance of business and other non-state actors in wielding power and authority in international affairs (Hall and Biersteker 2002;Rosenau and Czempiel 1992;McGrew and Held 2002). This article wishes to contribute to this scholarship by focusing on investment citizenship firms. Their area of activity-citizenship policy-is at the core of Westphalian sovereignty and has traditionally been an exclusive prerogative for the state (Rubenstein and Adler 2000). To uncover how and to what extent these firms wield power in relation to states is therefore my first ambition.
But these firms have another feature which is of interest here, and that is that they also serve the global economic elite. Research has shown that economic inequality has increased considerably over the past few decades, to the benefit of the "top 1%" (Milanovic 2016;Piketty 2014). There is now an elite stratum-a "transnational capitalist class" (Carroll 2010;Kantor 2016)-that is richer than any previous elite generation. It is also extremely mobile, which allows it to cut ties of identity and responsibility to any particular location or community (see e.g. Piketty 2014, chap. 12;Bauman 1998). My second ambition is to investigate in what ways the activities of investment citizenship firms contribute to bringing about this unfettered global elite (cf. Grell-Brisk 2018).
In order to grasp the role of these firms, I focus on their intermediary (third-party) positioning, and the types of agency and forms of power that flow from it. I pay attention to instrumental, structural, discursive, as well as productive power (Fuchs 2007;Barnett and Duvall 2005). I concentrate on the two main third party roles that the investment citizenship firms take on: as regulatory intermediary and as broker. The theoretical literature that helps us understand the agency and power that comes with intermediary positions include network analysis (e.g. Stovel and Shaw 2012;Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery 2009) and IR regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) models (e.g. Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017). My ambition is to use this literature to provide a critical analysis of how the intermediary position of these firms more precisely enables them to exercise power, which in a longer perspective may have consequences for the broad social and economic developments associated with contemporary neoliberal governance.
The material investigated consists of previous research, newspaper articles, webpage information, contracts, and industry publications of various kinds (magazines, books, statistics, indices, etc.). I have also attended one major industry conference (The Investment Migration Forum in Geneva 2018), which was important for my comprehension of this phenomenon. The structure is as follows: first comes a background section on citizenship acquisition in general, and citizenship sales in particular. Then follows a short review of the literature on business actors in global governance. After this, I introduce the analytical framework, explaining the different forms of business power and the distinct intermediary roles. I then turn to the empirical study, in which I grasp the activities of the investment citizenship firms by discussing them in relation to the theoretical concepts outlined. In actual examples, I draw on some of the most central firms: Henley & Partners especially, and to some extent also Arton Capital, Latitude, CS Global Partners and Apex Capital. The main findings are summarised in a concluding section.

Background: forms of citizenship acquisition
The "normal" way of acquiring citizenship is by birth. Birthright citizenship is either allotted on basis of parentage ( jus sanguinis) or of territory (jus soli)-most states use a combination of the two. The modern version of citizenship followed the emergence of the modern state, and it was for a long time considered exclusive and unchangeable. The British eighteenth century jurist William Blackstone wrote that the individual's obligation towards the state was "a debt of gratitude which cannot be forfeited, cancelled or altered by any change of time, place or circumstance" (quoted in Rubenstein and Adler 2000, 530). Such a view on citizenship was easier to sustain when migration was limited and when the ethics of "the nation" and its borders were unquestioned as basis of identity, community and obligation. Hence, in popular as well as scholarly imagination, the boundaries of the state were for a long time assumed to coincide with the boundaries of the nation and the citizenry. This conception was often far from reality, and more recently it has been challenged in quite fundamental ways (Bauböck 2018;Joppke 2010).
As migration has increased and societies have become more diverse, the acquisition of citizenship later in life (naturalisation) has become more widespread and more politicised (Kalm 2019). A crucial policy trend which has intensified the demand for naturalisation among immigrants is that more and more states now permit dual (or multiple) citizenship (Harpaz and Mateos 2019;Joppke 2019). Well into the 1960s was dual citizenship regarded as suspect and associated with dubious loyalties and threats to security. Lately this has changed, and the countries that permit dual citizenship now outnumber those that do not (Brøndstad Sejersen 2009). There now seems to be a widespread recognition that "Land cannot belong to two states at the same time, but people can" (Bauböck 2019(Bauböck , 1020. We can make a rough distinction between regular and facilitated naturalisation procedures. The first is that which most people encounter. Its basic criteria typically include long-time residence and a clean criminal record, but many states add further requirements, such as steady employment and passed language and civics tests (Bauböck et al. 2006). Investment citizenship instead pertains to the category facilitated naturalisation, that targets individuals with exceptional skills, funds or talents, or with a particular religious or ethnic belonging (Kälin 2021). Such people are not subject to the same requirements and their applications are processed much faster. A parallel example is the tendency to facilitate naturalisation for star athletes, which Ayelet Shachar refers to as "Olympic citizenship" (Shachar 2011). In such cases, citizenship is turned "into a recruitment tool for bolstering a nation's standing relative to its competitors" (2090).
Olympic citizenship and investment citizenship are comparable in that they are both out of reach for ordinary people. But investment citizenship is distinct in that it also commodifies citizenship, by turning it into something that can be bought and sold (Boatcă 2015;Tanasoca 2016). Many commentators find this subordination of citizenship to the logics of markets morally problematic. They argue that citizenship itself gets devalued when treated as a commodity. Moreover, it increases economic inequalities by providing the global elite opportunities for mobility and safety that others can only dream about (for overviews of the normative debate, see Bauböck 2018 andDžankić 2019, chap. 3).
In defence, proponents argue that the current system is already unjust and unequal. These injustices have been well researched. The particular citizenship one possesses is enormously significant for a person's life opportunities in almost all dimensions: income, employment, health, etc. To be a citizen of a rich and well-functioning democracy-rather than a poor and conflict-ridden state-is a gigantic advantage, as scholars have convincingly demonstrated (Milanovic 2016, 125-137;Boatcă 2019Boatcă , 2021; see also Kalm 2020). The crux is that this gigantic privilege is determined by the randomness of birth, with no consideration of merit, effort or any other quality that we today associate with fairness. For this reason, scholars have pointed out that the allocation of citizenship "is the modern equivalent of feudal privilege-an inherited status that greatly enhances one's life chances" (Carens 1987, 252;cf. Kochenov 2019cf. Kochenov , 2020Shachar 2009).
The ideological self-justification of the citizenship industry is that "their" form of inequality is not as bad as the inequalities we are already facing, and that their actions actually rectify things a bit. To Christian Kälin-a law scholar and the chairman of Henley & Partners-investment citizenship, "[…] even if it appears somehow repugnant to some, pales in comparison to many of these other inequities attendant on the ordinary transmission of citizenship" (Kälin 2019, 57).

Citizenship for sale
There are historical precursors of today's investment citizenship. In industry publications, but also in some scholarly literature, authors often highlight examples from Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Shachar 2017). In these historical examples, a pecuniary contribution of some sort was required in exchange for citizenship, and authors have therefore named this principle for inclusion jus pecuniae (Džankić 2019) or jus doni (Kälin 2019).
The more immediate forerunner of today's investment citizenship was the naturalisation programme set in place in St Kitts and Nevis in 1984. That programme was however dormant for around twenty years, until Henley & Partners restructured it in 2006 (Abrahamian 2015, 78). Most of the programmes that we see today were created after the financial crisis of 2008 (IMI 2021c). For many governments, selling citizenships has been a way of securing foreign investments of different kinds. The programmes do not take the form of direct cash transfers, in the way other goods are purchased. Instead, they usually involve investments into government funds, the creation of jobs, and/or real estate (Džankić 2019: chap. 4;Gamlen, Kutarna, and Monk 2016). 2 Prospective clients can either acquire citizenship directly, or buy permanent residence. The latter often means that citizenship can be obtained after a few years, although it then requires an additional application process. Tables 1 and 2 give a few details on a selection of programmes of both kinds.
Each of the programmes is more complex than can be shown in a table. For instance, the UK residence programme offers a six-year path to citizenship for GBP 2 million, but that period can be shortened for a larger contribution (GBP 5 million: 3 years, 10 million: 2 years). And in New Zealand one can shorten the required residence time from 146 days over three years to 44 days over two years, if one invests NZD 10 million instead of 3 million (Henley & Partners 2021a, 97, 113).
There are many more countries that offer residence programmes than citizenship programmes. Citizenship programme countries are dominated by small Caribbean economies, while residence programmes are also offered in several established and rich democratic countries (Henley & Partners 2021a, 134-137, 78-81). Many factors affect the attractiveness and hence the price of residence and citizenship programmes. In general, the prices are higher for countries where safety and quality of life are high, where mobility is enhanced through visa-free travel to other countries, where there is a favourable tax regime, where residence and visitation requirements are low (for citizenship programmes) and where naturalisation is relatively fast and undemanding (for residence programmes). And since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic the capacity of governments to deal with health risks has become an additional important factor (Henley & Partners 2021b).
The "market" for citizenship is quite particular. In each country, there is only one supplier, who at the same time decides on price and requirements-the state. Remember that deciding on citizenship is a central feature of state sovereignty (Surak 2016). The national background of those that apply for investment citizenship differs between countries, but on the whole, it appears dominated by China, Russia and India (IMI 2021a; New World Wealth 2020). Motives are varied, and linked among other things to the levels of wealth. But for many it functions as a "compensatory citizenship" (Harpaz 2019a), which allows increased mobility, quality of life, education opportunities for children, business opportunities and tax advantages (Harpaz and Mateos 2019;New World Wealth 2020;Freudmann 2015). Perhaps the core benefit of a second citizenship is that it brings a form of insurance; an escape route from current or future economic insecurities, political turmoil, and pandemics (Surak 2021;Kalm 2020). A leading person in the industry admitted in an interview that whether real or perceived, "instability attracts people to our business, it is a driver for it" (Wilcox 2017). In wake of the current pandemic, a second citizenship appears more than ever as a safety valve, and demand has therefore increased (Volek 2021).

Business actors in global governance
The literature on global governance has identified a large number of non-state actors that have influence in international affairs (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992;McGrew and Held 2002). Examples include private firms, religious groups, epistemic communities, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), as well as mafias and mercenary armies (Reinalda 2011;Cutler, Haufler, and Porter 1999). Such actors challenge traditional state-centred  hierarchical forms of governance, and they enjoy various forms of authority-for instance, moral authority and market authority (Hall and Biersteker 2002;Reinalda 2011;Cutler, Haufler, and Porter 1999;Fuchs 2007). Large business actors are undoubtedly among the most powerful among non-state actors. Transnational corporations (TNCs), in particular, have skyrocketed both in terms of numbers and in terms of the volume of resources that they command. TNCs are understood as the main beneficiaries of globalisation, but also as its main architects-and its main villains (Fuchs 2007, 2). Business actors have moved into many areas which used to be the sole domain of public actors, most conspicuously those related to the core of Westphalian sovereignty. Citizenship, as this article is concerned with, is one example. Another is national security provision. In contrast to investment citizenship, there is quite a bit of research on that case from a global governance perspective (see Abrahamsen and Leander 2016).
Few scholars now doubt that business actors are able to exercise power vis-à-vis governments, but the extent of that power is debated. Firms not seldom pressure governments by threatening to relocate elsewhere if their policy preferences are not satisfied -taking investments and employment opportunities with them when they go. This has led to the widespread assumption that governments are quite powerless in relation to large business actors, and that neoliberal policies were essentially forced upon them. However, Frederick W. Mayer and Nicola Phillips have found that this assumption is misguided. In fact, states often take a very active role in "outsourcing governance"that is, delegating authority and regulative powers to business actors-which means that states are not merely victims to globalising forces, but very active agents therein (Mayer and Phillips 2017). Business actors are given increased leverage through juridical restructurings that seek to insulate them from state interference. In this process of capitalist expansion, the meaning and purpose of statehood is reshaped (Gill and Cutler 2014;Cutler 2016). Neoliberalism has often presented itself as anti-statist, but it relies in actual practice very much on the state-to provide regulations, enforce laws, and create a favourable business environment. Yves Winter and Joshua Chambers-Letson refer to the present unstable configuration of state and economic powers as "neoliberal sovereignty". The neoliberal state tends to pursue an economic policy which leans towards low taxation, fiscal austerity, de-regulation, liberalisation and privatisation. But neoliberalism is also a political rationality, and as such has wide impact on the provision of welfare, on public education on election campaigns, and-critically for the present context-on citizenship: "[…] it also means reorganizing citizenship along market norms, constructing citizens as consumers and/or as independent entrepreneurs" (Winter and Chambers-Letson 2015, 289;cf. Mavelli 2018).
States have always acted strategically in the area of naturalisation, while the goals they have pursued have shifted. What we are concerned with here is their desire to attract wealthy investors for economic gains in the international "scramble for citizens" (Cook-Martín 2013). But historically, state preferences have not seldom been formulated in ethnic or religious terms. What is new, scholars claim, is that individuals have also begun to act instrumentally when it comes to matters of nationality. Buying investment citizenship is only one example, although an important one (Joppke 2019;Harpaz 2019aHarpaz , 2019b. I suggest that another novelty is the increased role of private companies when it comes to facilitating and implementing instrumental citizenship, through intermediary roles.

Business power and third-party roles
In what ways, more exactly, can firms wield power, and how is this connected to their position as intermediaries? In this section, I flesh out the analytical framework that will guide the analysis of the investment citizenship firms.
Business actors may wield several different kinds of power in global governance. Doris Fuchs discusses three: 3 Instrumental power is when they directly try to influence political decision-makers, through lobbying and campaign financing at national or transnational levels. What she calls structural power has to do with agenda-setting and rule-setting. It refers to business threats of withdrawal and relocation (as mentioned above), but also to the many new "soft" forms for regulation that business actors pursue, including codes of conduct, public-private partnership, etc. Discursive power is linked to firms' ability to influence norms and ideologies. The greater trust in for-profit actors to carry out government regulations is in Fuchs analysis a result of their discursive power (Fuchs 2007, chap. 3). In addition, we may want to add the more diffuse and Michel Foucault-inspired productive power, the power to constitute relations, identities and social capacities (Barnett and Duvall 2005). These forms of power are interrelated and affect each other in many ways. For instance, productive power can contribute to making compulsory forms of power legitimate, and compulsory power may affect what is perceived as desirable (44).
In this article, I will concentrate on the power-wielding capacities that are enabled by the companies' third-party position, to which we now turn. Investment citizenship firms operate in an intermediary position-between governments and elite clients. They act both "with" governments, as regulatory intermediaries, and as brokers, positioned between governments and elite clients, acting on behalf of both of them. Below, I review theories on these two roles, with the objective to capture the power and influence of the firms.

Regulatory intermediaries
Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal (2017) have developed a generalised model on the relationship between regulator, intermediary and target-"the RIT model". An intermediary in this model joins the regulator in attempting to influence the target, as investment citizenship firms do when developing or carrying out government policy. The model enables us to classify and compare different cases of intermediary regulation, but it also explains why it arises and what implications it has in terms of power.
Third-party regulation is by definition indirect. This makes it particularly prevalent in global governance, where conditions for hierarchical steering are often absent (De Silva 2017). Other than being indirect, there are large variations. The intermediaries themselves can be private, public or civil society actors, their motivation can be power, profit or ideology, and they may serve private as well as public interests. Rule-makers choose to involve intermediaries when they lack direct connections with the target of regulation, and/ or when they lack required expertise, information, operational capacity, or legitimacy (Abbott et al. 2015).
The RIT model is particularly apt for grasping instrumental power, as when firms engage in direct lobbying for their services and for continuing policy reforms. According to the theory, the power that an intermediary (here, an investment citizenship firm) can wield over a regulator (here, a government) is linked to how its role is defined-formally or informally. It is also related to the regulator's level of control, which ranges from the harder form of delegation (legal control) to softer form of orchestration (voluntary compliance) (Abbott et al. 2015).
Power may also be acquired over time, through feedback sequences. Feedback on regulation often passes through the intermediary to the regulator, which gives the intermediary power to re-formulate the target's message. Moreover, the intermediary itself also presents its own feedback to the regulator, who is likely to listen as the intermediary normally enjoys the regulator's trust (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017, 23-28;Auld and Renckens 2017). Another process when the third party clearly affects the development of policy is when the intermediary has captured (i.e. come to dominate) the regulator. The intermediary often participates in lobbying efforts that initiate the demand for regulation to begin with. When regulation is in place, and the intermediary has acquired its role, it then often continues to advise the regulator on how to modify and change policy-and as we just saw it is likely to have the regulator's ear. Capture is when this has gone so far that the intermediaries are in effect "the leaders in regulation, with the ostensible rule-makers following them" (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017, 30).

Brokers
The second intermediary role that investment citizenship firms hold is as brokers. This is when they connect governments and elite clients, act on behalf of both of them, and attempt to establish relationships that benefit both. By definition, brokers are always positioned between entities that were not previously in direct contact with each other, and they thereby bridge a "structural hole" in the social structure (Burt 2004). Brokerage enables the two sides to gain access to resources and knowledge they would not otherwise have had (Komito 2007, 53).
Their in-between role enables brokers to exercise instrumental power. Since their position enables contact between the two sides, it gives them a certain advantage over them. Not seldom does the broker monopolise exchanges between them. An important general observation in the literature is that brokers for this reason often make considerable gains, monetary or otherwise. They are also likely to enjoy a high level of trust from the two sides (Burt 2004;Komito 2007). But at the same time, brokers are quite vulnerable to suspicions of corruption, of pocketing money or in other ways misusing their position. Hence, in order to keep trust and legitimacy, and to retain the benefits that come from the information advantage, brokers must pay great attention to public image (Stovel and Shaw 2012).
Brokerage also involves productive power, as it makes new connections and thereby lays the ground for new social identities and relations. This is especially likely for the form of brokerage that concerns us here. Much of the literature on brokerage, not least in IR, assumes a prior situation of conflict between the two parties (Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery 2009;Macdonald 2017;Goddard 2009;cf. Simmel 1950). In contrast, the context of the present type of brokerage is not antagonistic. This broker acts more as a matchmaker or a head-hunter than as a mediator in conflict. The investment citizenship firms connect states and wealthy individuals, and both sides want to gain something from this relation. This brokerage role is a variety of catalyst brokerage (Obstfelt 2005;Collins-Dogrul 2012;Stovel and Shaw 2012). Like a catalyst in chemistry, catalyst brokers incite a new form of interaction which they themselves are minimally affected by. The broker connects the two sides and then withdraws, and the result is a newly established connection. This is why catalyst brokerage is considered a transformative kind of brokerage, which can bring forward institutional innovations (Obstfelt 2005;Koster and van Leynseele 2018). Its productive power lies in its capacity to create new relations between the two sides (in this case, states and wealthy individuals), which may also change the two and create something new. In the longer run, this may also have aggregate effects at the macro level, impacting the larger governance structures of states and markets (Stovel and Shaw 2012, 154).

Investment citizenship firms as intermediaries
In this section, we will see how investment citizenship firms act in the above-mentioned third-party positions, as regulatory intermediaries and as brokers, and in what ways this allows them to exercise power in different forms. First, a few words on the investment citizenship industry. This industry has expanded very fast. In early 2019, it was estimated to US$ 21,4 billion, which meant it had tripled since 2011 (Nesheim 2019). In a four-year period, only the ten largest programmes have together approved more than 100 000 investment migration applications, including residence as well as citizenship (Nesheim 2021). The countries that have had the largest revenues from citizenship and residence programmes over the past few years are the USA, Cyprus, Turkey, the UK and Portugal (IMI 2021a). 4 China is by far the major source country, followed by Russia, India and Turkey. The UK and France are also large senders of millionaire migrants (IMI 2021b). Many countries have a "black list" of nationalities from which they do not accept applications. Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Somalia, and Yemen are frequent on those lists (Nesheim 2018).

Investment citizenship firms as regulatory intermediaries
Characterisation of the intermediary firms As regulatory intermediaries, the firms advice governments and/or assist them in implementing the programmes. There are several different types of firms. 5 One group consists of the large transnational firms in the citizenship and residence industry, such as Henley & Partners, Arton Capital, CS Global Partners and Latitude. These firms offer a range of services to individuals, but what makes them stand out as a group is that they also act as advisors to governments and sometimes are in charge of developing and running the programmes. This is the type of firm that this text is mostly concerned with. A second category is the large transnational law and accounting firms that offer advice and services to individuals but that do not run programmes for governments. Examples are PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and KPMG. The third category is composed of the firms that operate as accredited local agents in the countries where citizenship programmes are run, and it is often those that submit the application. Some of them are engaged by multinational firms for handling a specific aspect of service to their clients. The number of such firms varies considerably with the countries (IMI 2021a; Nesheim 2020b).
If we were to characterise the firms as intermediaries, according to the criteria mentioned in the theory section above, they appear most obviously as private actors, who serve private interest and are motivated by profit. But some also appear to have ideological motivations. 6 Arton Capital claims that "We lead and manage our organisation with the avowed purpose of making the world a better place." (Arton Capital 2021d). Both Arton Capital and Henley & Partners emphasise philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. Henley & Partners have engaged UNHCR in a partnership for the benefit of refugees, as a way of assisting those that do not have the options of their wealthy clients. They also have university scholarship for underprivileged Caribbean youth, and an annual Global Citizen Award for "remarkable individuals working at local level to advance one of the global challenges affecting humanity today" (Henley & Partners 2021c). Such ideological and political justifications are sometimes dismissed as insincere and self-serving. But we cannot know that they are not to some extent genuine, and motivate actions besides profit.
Reasons for turning to private actors Why, then, have governments contracted firms in the area of investment citizenship? At a broader level, it needs to be seen against the background of the general New Public Management trend of the past decades. In more and more areas, politicians have turned to private consultants for public policy development (Lapsley, Miller, and Pollock 2013). This increased "perception of business as a legitimate political actor and its associated acquisition of political authority" testifies to the increased discursive power of business overall (Fuchs 2007, 164). Turning to investment citizenship specifically, there have been cases where states themselves have designed and implemented policy, but now the trend is towards using intermediary firms. The state-developed programmes have tended to fail because of scandals, lack of transparency and corruption. Just as the theory on regulative intermediaries would have us to expect, governments have turned to private firms in order to get at something that they themselves lack: "expertise, instruction, support services, customers, opportunities, and promotion for its programme, as well as intellectual justifications, political strategies, and professional lobbying for dealing with actual or potential challengers" (Van Fossen 2018, 293; see also Džankić 2019, 148-149). However, the theory on regulatory intermediaries holds that initiative often may come from the intermediary, who lobbies the regulator. Such initiatives can be observed in that investment citizenship companies target government audiences in marketing and promotional material, aiming to convince them that they need their services.
The tasks of the firms Let us now turn to what tasks investment citizenship firms carry out as regulatory intermediaries working for governments. Promotion and marketing of country programmes are important ones, and here governments enjoy the experience, and professional knowhow of the firms for reaching the target, just as the theory expects. The firm CS Global explains for prospective state clients that "Our marketing solutions include market positioning, brand identity creation, brand optimisation, digital marketing, reputation management, PR & Communications, events, print and digital advertising" (CS Global Partners 2021). To hear of national citizenship as a "brand" or "product" may be startling for an outsider, but it is common in the industry, and it testifies to its commodification (Boatcă 2015;Tanasoca 2016 Abrahamian 2015, 80).
Some of the firms are also actively partaking in creating and running the actual programmes, which means a deeper form of engagement for them as regulatory intermediaries. It is interesting to see how they present their activities with different country programmes. Henley & Partners says that it has a mandate "to design and implement" (Antigua and Barbuda), to "design, implement and promote" (St Kitts and Nevis), and to "advise on, enhance, and globally re-launch" the investment citizenship programme (Grenada) (Henley & Partners 2021d). Latitude, another important firm, simply explains that it has been a "lead contributor" in redesigning some programmes (Canada) and in the design, set-up and launch of others (Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Malta) (Latitude 2021). Arton Capital claims to have-among several different roles-a "strategic advisory role" with Québec in Canada, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hungary 7 , Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia and Armenia (Arton Capital 2021a).
These different roles allow the firms varying space for exercising instrumental power vis-à-vis governments. They may act more modestly as "advisors", while sometimes they are tasked with actually designing the programmes. Occasionally, they are also involved in reforming and redesigning the programmes. As we saw in the theory section, such reform processes work through feedback sequences, and may allow intermediary actors to acquire additional power over time.

Concession agreements
The power of an intermediary has in part to do with how its role is formulated (formally or informally) and the degree of control that the regulator holds over it. When investment citizenship firms act as concessionaries to the governments in question, they take on the "hardest" and most hierarchical role that this regulatory intermediary can assume. Concessions are arrangements between a government and a company "in which the government transfers to the company the right to maintain, produce, or provide a good or service within the country for a limited period of time, but the government retains ultimate ownership of that right" (Miranda 2007, 512). Concession agreements are exclusive and give the firm a particularly attractive role. Henley & Partners 7 N.B. Hungary's programme is discontinued since 2017.
have been granted concessions in Moldova, Malta and Thailand which tasked them to design, implement (Thailand: "enhance") and promote the programmes (Henley & Partners 2021d). The Malta concession was profitable but also probably the most controversial. In early 2020, it was estimated that the company had earned €36,8 million from it since that programme was launched in 2014 (Farrugia 2020;Carrera 2014; see also Borg 2021).
Governments have the power the end the contracts, but this does not mean that firms are very exposed and vulnerable. A significant feature of concession agreements is that they oblige the government to compensate the firm, should the contract be terminated. This is a sort of insurance against future political change, which much limits the risk that the company takes. In Malta's ten-year concession contract, paragraph 14.7.2 stated that, in case the contract was to be ended ahead of time, "the Government shall be liable for and shall pay to the Concessionaire the aggregate of all losses that have been or will be […] a direct result of the termination of this Contract" (Government of Malta 2013; Farrugia 2020). In 2020 the European Commission initiated infringement procedures against Malta because of its investment citizenship programme. The led Malta to restructure its programme, which meant that Henley & Partners lost the concession, and therefore were in right of compensation.
Another example is the concession agreement with Moldova, which was also terminated in 2020, since Moldova was pressured by the EU to end its citizenship programme. This allegedly cost the government "millions" in compensation to Henley & Partners (Nesheim 2020a). Such government guarantees against losses due to political change seem to testify to the international neoliberal legal restructurings that A. Claire Cutler and others have observed, that tend to put private business interest ahead of public interest (Gill and Cutler 2014;Cutler 2016).

Lobbying
A main way in which business exercise instrumental power is through lobbying (Fuchs 2007). We have already seen that investment citizenship firms lobby governments to create demand for their services, and that this may set the relation between regulator and intermediary in motion. But there is another aspect of national-level lobbying, which is when the firm act on behalf of the contracting government to handle domestic opposition. In a promotional volume for its Government Advisory, Henley & Partners explain that they can assist with the "smooth roll-out of a program", which involves "navigating its local reception". This is needed, they say, as political resistance may arise as "opposition parties may interpret the programme's success as a barrier to their own ascendance to power" (Henley & Partners 2018, 108). In such formulations there is little room for legitimate questioning of the programmes, as critique is dismissed as motivated by self-interest only.
Some of the larger companies are engaged in lobbying beyond the national level. A few have entries in the EU Transparency Register which lists lobbyists active at the EU level (Henley & Partners, Arton Capital and the industry organisation Investment Migration Council, IMC). The IMC also has a consultative status as an NGO with the United Nations, through the ECOSOC accreditation system. In the RIT model, lobbying signifies the attempts of the intermediary to influence the regulator. But we find in the investment migration industry that lobbying can also occur as the intermediary act for the regulator in order to influence the regulator's regulator. Investment citizenship firms have occasionally lobbied in defence of a particular country programme, defending it in international negotiations. Henley & Partners claims to have been "instrumental in the negotiation of a visa-waiver agreement between St Kitts and Nevis and the EU" (Henley & Partners 2021d). The chairman Christian Kälin asserts that it was he that successfully lobbied European lawmakers, which led to a sharp increase in the demand for this passport (Abrahamian 2015, 80-83). Henley & Partners has also lobbied for Malta's programme, as its citizenship sale was controversial because it would give clients access to live and conduct business across the EU. The European Commission in 2014 voted against the programme with a great majority. In response, Malta sent its own attorney-general along Henley & Partners' lawyers and representatives, who managed to argue successfully that European authorities had no right to interfere in the citizenship policies of sovereign states (87-88; Parker 2017). The question is however not definitely settled, because, as we saw above, the Commission has opened infringement procedures against Malta (European Commission 2019, 2020; Pegg, Harding, and Goodley 2021;Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation 2021).
The strong position of Henley & Partners in Malta is also evident from the contract which specifies that the Government must send high-ranking representatives to speak at industry events and conferences "whenever requested by the Concessionaire" (Government of Malta 2013, para. 7.4). At one occasion, then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat missed out on a discussion in the European Parliament about the rule of law in Malta, because he was attending a Henley & Partners event in Hong Kong (Bagnoli 2018). Other heads of government are also regularly present at such industry events. At the Global Citizenship Conference in London 2019, there were three PMs present, from St Lucia, Albania and Montenegro (Neate 2019). Arton Capital has also arranged events that have attracted political and other elites. Its "Global Citizen Forums" have been attended by PMs as well as past and present leaders of international organisations, like Kofi Annan and José Manuel Barroso, as well as entertainment stars, like Robert DeNiro, Wyclef Jean and Akon (Arton Capital 2021b).

Final reflections
To take decisions on naturalisation and citizenship is a matter for the sovereign state, as established in international law. However, we have seen in this section that the investment citizenship firms are sometimes able to amass considerable instrumental powers. It does not seem unthinkable that situations of what the theory section called "regulatory capture" may arise-that is, when the firm takes the lead and governmental authorities follow. Governments of course retain the right to terminate contracts before they expire but, especially in the case of concession agreements, this carries considerable costs.
Moreover, and although this article is concerned with the normal working of the industry, it should be mentioned that there have been numerous media allegations that the companies in question have used dirty methods for exerting instrumental power-by influencing governments, manipulating elections, and silencing critical journalists (Abrahamian 2015, 83;Gray 2018;Bagnoli 2018; Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation 2021; Davies et al. 2020). One such scandal led to the 2020 termination of Cyprus' citizenship programme, which had long been Europe's most profitable (IMI 2021c; Al Jazeera 2020).

Catalyst brokerage in investment citizenship
In contrast to their role as regulatory intermediaries-when firms co-act with governments-their role as brokers sets them more clearly in-between, serving both governments and clients. As argued in the theory section, what we observe here is a form of catalyst brokerage. The catalyst broker (here, the investment citizenship firm) establishes a relation between two parties (governments and private individuals), and then withdraws. Since the brokerage has a clear end point, such brokers are always on the lookout for new structural holes to bridge (Burt 2004). Their power and prestige increase with each successful case of brokerage, but should their reputation be tainted, this might be irreparable (Stovel and Shaw 2012, 146, 148).
A broker always has an information advantage relative to the two sides it connects, and it often monopolises communication between them. This privileged position allows the broker to exercise instrumental power. But the special case of catalyst brokerage is also known for its creativity, as the connections it establishes shape new relations and identities. It can therefore be a way of amassing and exercising productive power. We should note that "creativity" here should be understood in a normatively neutral fashion, as the bonds created can be beneficial as well as problematic (Ramtohul 2016). The consequences are likely to be different for different groups and also to change over time. Catalyst brokerage in investment citizenship creates most directly new relationships between states and new citizens. But it also has multiple consequences for the citizenries in countries of origin and destination. Over the longer run, and as we will come back to below, effects may be structural and influence the relationship between states and markets, and it may also intensify global inequalities.

The clients
We should say something about who the clients are, since they have not been the centre of attention so far. To state the obvious, they are very wealthy, and they are talked about and addressed as such. They are often referred to as UHNWIs-Ultra High Net Worth Individuals-which means that they are good for at least US$ 30 million (Knight Frank 2018, 2). Several studies have shown that this group has become even richer during the past few decades, as inequalities have widened and taken on slightly different patterns than before. For instance, today's wealthy are to a larger extent self-made than in former generations. They also tend to be more diverse in terms of national background (Milanovic 2016;Piketty 2014;Khan 2012, 363). As we have seen, many of the UHNWIs who are the clients of investment citizenship firms were born far beyond Europe and North America.
The behaviour and preferences of UHNWIs is of obvious interest for many actors, including investment citizenship firms. Various research firms therefore investigate this group-their housing preferences, their hobbies, consumption patterns and philanthropic interests-and produce annual publications such as The Wealth Report (Knight Frank 2018) Billionaire Insights (UBS and PwC 2020) and Billionaire Census (Wealth-X 2020). Some of them focus on migratory patterns: where UHNWIs come from, and what are the main countries and cities of destination. An example is the recurring Global Wealth Migration Review (New World Wealth 2020). One such study estimates that 34% of the UHNWI (≈79 300 persons) already possess a second passport, and that another 29% are planning to buy one (Knight Frank 2018, 23).

Connecting states and clients
Then, how do the firms address states and clients, and how are they linked? Advertisement and PR are main instruments for this brokerage. The firms address both groups of clients separately, seeking to convince them that they can mutually benefit each other. The main benefits to governments are, of course, the inflow of investments and donations, and the macro-economic impact on employment and taxes that this may have. But there are also supposedly intangible benefits connected to attracting wealthy new citizens. The new elite citizens, it is argued, may have the effect that "host countries gain prominence in the international arena" which leads to publicity, tourism, and more citizenship applications (Henley & Partners 2018, 39).
Other advertisements and promotional material are aimed to prospective clients and their representatives. It comes in many forms-images, reports, booklets, events and so on. Advertisements are adapted to the citizenship they promote. A campaign by Henley & Partners featured a man and a boy, supposedly father and son, which illustrates that citizenship can be passed down to the next generation. In the ad for Maltese citizenship, the father is helping the son with his tie, against the background of an old castle or mansion, which evokes traditional European private schools. In the ad for Grenada, the two are instead steering some kind of yacht in the Caribbean waters. These ads are clearly directed at the affluent few for whom it is possible to use citizenship as a way to "Define your Future" as the ads put it.
Besides advertisements, there are several other methods that the companies use to address their target groups. They produce various tools that enable the potential client to choose where to apply. Henley & Partners and Arton Capital produce rankings where different nationalities are compared in terms of the advantages that they bring to the new citizens. Both produce passport indices, and Henley & Partners also compounds the more encompassing Kälin and Kochenov's Quality of Nationality Index. Arton Capital also has an interactive "program match tool", where one enters one's details (e.g. net worth, intention to relocate, and how important one finds, respectively, processing speed, quality of life and simplicity of the process) and then gets immediate response on the most suitable citizenship programme to apply for (Arton Capital 2021c).
The large firms also have their own glossy magazines. Henley & Partners has Global Citizenship Review, Arton Capital has Global Citizenship Magazine. These magazines often front some noted billionaire, and include various success stories along with reports on luxury consumption, articles about philanthropy, advertisements and information on different passport programmes. It is common to appeal to the clients as "global citizens" as in the following example: "Global citizenship defines the mindset of those that primarily identify as part of the global community rather than as a citizen of a particular nation or place." The quote continues: "For some, the citizenship and residence with which they were born restricts their freedom to be a global citizen. In the case of high-net-worth individuals, this may mean restrictions on their ability to do business or invest globally or limitations on where they can reside or visit freely" (GIIC 2021). It is such impediments to realising themselves as global citizens, in this sense, that the firms claim to be working towards removing.
Alongside such positive motivations, at least as important is the discourse of risk and danger, and the need to have an escape option. In a guide to governments and clients it is argued that "Individuals interested in insuring against political and economic uncertainty […] cannot afford to ignore the value of expanding their residence and citizenship options" (The Economist and Henley & Partners 2019, 1). The felt need for this kind of insurance has been especially strong among the wealthy from poor, war-torn, conflictridden countries-born into what the industry refers to as "low quality nationalities"-as an additional nationality gives them an exit option. Apex Capital's promotion of the Anguilla residence programme reads: "the perfect escape should you and your family ever need to leave your home country without warning" (Apex Capital Partners 2021). Such a wording surely has strongest appeal for those that fear that political and social instability is impending. But the onset of the global pandemic intensified the felt need for a second passport as a way out, and spread it to the wealthy of supposedly more affluent and safe countries. As one Italian multimillionaire put it: "We want to know there is a safe place, with good medical services, that the whole family can go to at short notice if we need to, only citizenship can guarantee that." (SchengenVisaInfo 2020, italics removed).

Handling accusations of corruption
Brokers are very vulnerable to suspicions of corruption, as we saw in the theory section. They make their gains because of the leverage that their intermediary role gives them, but they must at the same time be very cautious about managing their appearances. This concern with reputation is ubiquitous in the investment citizenship industry. Citizenship and residence programmes are often criticised for providing escape routes for criminals, tax evaders and corrupt politicians, which has been shown in several countries (OECD 2018; European Commission 2019; Global Witness 2020; Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation 2021; Farolfi, Harding, and Orphanides 2018; Al Jazeera 2020; Davies et al. 2020;Transparency International and Global Witness 2018). Industry representatives admit that there are among them some unscrupulous companies, often talked about as "bozos" or "bad apples", that make the industry as a whole look bad (Abrahamian 2015, 88-89;Dahinden 2017). Concerns with managing perceptions revolve around vetting and due diligence, but also around ethical standards, industry regulation and certification. 8 To this effect, the firms have created industry organisations. Such organisations are known to exercise soft forms of power in global governance, as they can talk in the name of the industry in the media, and represent members when addressing politicians (Cutler, Haufler, and Porter 1999, 12-13;Fuchs 2007). This is what the Investment Migration Council (IMC) aspires to be doing: "The Investment Migration Council (IMC) is the worldwide association for investor immigration and Citizenship-by-Investment, bringing together the leading stakeholders in the field and giving the industry a voice" (IMC 2021). It also strives to represent and regulate the emerging "profession" of investment migration consultants. 9 Professional organisations have a role in causing and legitimising institutional change, and professions often set up their own rules of conduct and systems for certification, in order to control their own boundaries (Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002). The IMC recently developed an "ethical code of conduct", and it offers courses leading to a "Certification in Investment Citizenship" for active and prospective industry participants (IMC 2021). These soft regulation activities are examples of what Doris Fuchs calls structural power (Fuchs 2007).
But we can also see attempts at wielding discursive power in their creation and dissemination of knowledge. As is common in professional organisations, the IMC publishes extensively: policy briefs, industry reports, yearbooks, etc., besides the material that the member firms produce. On its advisory committee are prominent citizenship academics and experts. This respect for knowledge lends an air of credibility and legitimacy to the industry. A difficulty for IMC's ambitions is that so far it has not been recognised as a representative of the industry as a whole. This Henley & Partners-initiated organisation has a challenger industry organisation, the Global Investor Immigration Council (GIIC), which was set up by Arton Capital, APEX Capital, and others (Salerno and Lyetayev 2021).

Final reflections
We have seen that brokerage allows investment citizenship firms to exert different forms of power. Productive power is particularly distinctive for catalyst brokers, and works through the creation of linkages. Investment citizenship firms connect states and individuals, and in the short term the variations in these relationships are likely to be great. But in the longer term, we can observe patterns of a more general, or structural, kind. This is arguably what makes the practices of the firms particularly consequential. Citizenship sales provide the global elite, or the "transnational capitalist class", with business and mobility opportunities (Carroll 2010;Kantor 2016;Grell-Brisk 2018). But it also works as a form of insurance-an escape option, should times go bad. This contrasts with the way we usually conceive of citizenship: as a long-term involvement with one's state and co-citizens. Instead, "Citizenship, in these cases, functions more as a Global Entry pass or an American Express card than a way of meaningfully identifying one's place in the world" (Abrahamian 2015, 74).

Conclusion
The objective of this text has been to explore the agency and the powers by investment citizenship firms, by approaching them as intermediaries in global governance.
The literature on intermediaries can help us grasp the specific instances when firms can exert power, which in turn can inform our understanding of the broader structural developments in global governance. I have investigated two different intermediary roles that these firms play. One is the role as regulatory intermediaries. Just as the theory predicted, the firms have often been hired by governments to develop, reform or advise on their citizenship by investment policy. The reason is that the firms are regarded as holders of expert knowledge, skills and experience. Success of earlier programmes also strengthen their standing. Moreover, they bring potential applicants as they represent wealthy clients. It is the large investment citizenship firms that are contracted as government advisories in this way. The market, design. run and develop the programmes, and they often make a hefty profit from these tasks (Bagnoli 2018). The firms can gain instrumental power in relation to governments through feedback sequences, reforming and reshaping the investment migration programmes. There might even arise a situation of capture, where the firm effectively leads and the government follows. Firms can also exert instrumental power through lobbying practices at both global and national levels. At occasions, a firm has gained benefits for the government that it serves by engaging in lobbying an international institution-a role that could be taken into account when developing the theoretical "RIT model" further (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017).
Second, I explored the role of these firms as brokers. The investment citizenship firms, I have argued, act as catalyst brokers as they establish connections between individuals and governments and then withdraw. In this role they exercise different forms of power. Discursive power can be observed in the production and dissemination of knowledge and in their conscious work towards improving the image of the industry, for instance through establishing industry/professional organisations. When setting up such organisations, the companies have also begun to create soft regulations through ethical codes and industry standards, which in Doris Fuchs' terms denotes structural power (Fuchs 2007).
The capacity of catalyst brokers to create new relationships and identities is what makes them exert productive power (Barnett and Duvall 2005). At the individual level, the companies help create the relation of citizenship between state and client. The form this relationship takes depends on many things, especially on whether the new citizen relocates or not. But we need to look beyond the individual level. To study brokers can help us understand third parties' effect on macro level structures (Stovel and Shaw 2012, 154).
An important structural effect of the industry is that it contributes to what Thomas Piketty calls the "secession of wealth"-the global elite is liberating itself from any meaningful relation to a particular location. Unlike the less fortunate of their co-nationals, the clients of the industry can buy themselves a way out of situations of economic turmoil, political upheaval, environmental disasters and pandemics, should need to arise (Harpaz 2019b). From this follows a diminished sense of responsibility to any specific place, and this is characteristic for the widening inequalities in our present (Piketty 2014, 464-465;Bauman 1998). Therefore, the creative productive powers of the investment citizenship industry lie not only in the construction of new bonds between an individual and a state. At the aggregate level, and in the longer run, this practice contributes to exacerbating processes of global inequality (cf. Boatcă 2015).