Business plays a critical yet poorly understood role in trade policymaking. This paper develops an analytical framework that focuses on the distribution of business trade preferences, the forces that cause those preferences to change, and the ability of different groups to exert political influence over policy. It then applies this framework to Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. Large, exporting firms increased their weight due to shifts in the international context, the condition of the domestic economy, and previous government policies. Policymakers granted political access to actors whose economic and political leverage had risen, typically those who controlled numerous investment resources and sought out a direct role in policymaking. Many of these actors also favored free trade. Business participation in trade policy reflects these patterns. Large, outward-oriented firms played an increasingly important role in Mexico's adoption of free trade policies over the 1980s and early 1990s.

How do multilateral institutions influence the strategic choices and actions of international managers? This paper addresses the question by exploring the impact of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) decision-making process on multinational enterprises (MNEs). We discuss the three phases of the WTO decision-making lifecycle - the formulation of trade rules, the implementation of those rules, and the enforcement of the rules – and propose a strategic adjustment framework for understanding how companies alter their strategies and structures in response to the WTO's rules and operations. We argue that the increased relevance of multilateral rules and enforcement mechanisms – embodied in the WTO - is an important influence on MNE strategies and structures because of the increasing embeddedness of the WTO in national levels of regulation. We illustrate this through examples taken from the pharmaceutical, textiles and sugar industries sectors that have witnessed substantial multilateral regulation.

Recognition of co-operatives as a legitimate business model and form of economic participation was significantly challenged by the rise of neo-liberalism in the 1980s with its emphasis on individuals and markets. This fueled an externally and internally driven push to demutualize co-operatives and convert them into Investor Owned Businesses (IOB). While the international trend to demutualize emerged from the end of the Second World War, evidence indicates it accelerated from the late 1980s until the onset of the Global Financial Crisis. Drawing on an ongoing project of historical data collection and visual analysis of Australian co-operatives, this paper explores the Australian experience with demutualization, particularly with regard to agriculture. In line with the international experience, there has been a surge in Australian demutualization since the 1980s. However, while demutualization continues to be a feature of the Australian landscape post-GFC as co-operatives tackle with the changed political and economic environment, the paper also challenges the view that demutualization is inevitable for agricultural co-operatives. Co-operative managers can make strategic choices to avoid demutualization and retain member control. Further, co-operative culture and the persistence of co-operative clusters in particular regions can blunt the push to demutualize.

To ascertain whether youth bulges are related to violent conflict and whether violent conflict falls off when youth bulges are followed by busts, we analyzed data from 1998–2005 covering 127 nations. Controlling for variables representing such factors as socio-development, macroeconomics, technology advancement, government capacity, and geo-politics, we find that youth bulges are related to violent conflict, but when youth bulges are followed by busts violent conflict grows rather than diminishes contrary to the prediction we make. From this analysis, we draw implications for further research and analysis with regard to doing business in violence-prone nations.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) increasingly internationalize research and development (R&D), but the distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) in R&D differs from that of general FDI. I use data on US MNC affiliates’ investments abroad (2001–2008) to demonstrate that increasing value added predicts more future R&D FDI, as R&D FDI is an upgrade decision. I then use data on R&D investment incentives to show that, while governments spend resources on R&D incentives, these can be negative predictors of R&D FDI. The findings imply that government efforts are best directed at incremental encouragement of value-added activities, as efforts to jump to R&D FDI are misguided.

In this paper, we place the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) into broader geo-political and economic context given the current Trump Administration's withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the loss of momentum for TTIP. Both TPP and TTIP sought to provide key tactical solutions to the particular trade/investment problems participating states faced. For the U.S. government, these free trade agreements also represented a geo-political undertaking, an attempt to once again set trade rules in light of deadlock in the WTO. Ultimately, the inability of the Obama Administration to successfully complete negotiations for and ratification of these two deals does not alter the underlying motivations that led to them in the first place. The stagnation of these deals, however, has intensified geo-economic and geo-strategic concerns: opening the door to rival articulations of trade governance and undermining U.S. credibility with its partners.

While regulators, firms, and the courts must all be able to interpret regulations to best address economic and social issues, regulatory interpretation may vary greatly across parties. After introducing a framework to explain the impact of the complexity of written regulations and the complexity of the regulatory environment on regulatory interpretation, this paper utilizes regulatory examples to explore the challenges associated with regulatory interpretation. Several recent initiatives designed to improve regulatory efficacy are examined to assess potential methods available to reduce challenges associated with regulatory interpretation. When considered with the public policy implementation literature and research on networks in public policy, several implications emerge from the consideration of regulatory interpretation and recent regulatory initiatives. Regulators should pursue strategies to minimize the number of possible interpretations in the design of regulation and seek improved regulatory mechanisms to alleviate regulatory interpretation challenges. Furthermore, theoretical models should acknowledge regulatory interpretation to better assist in the design and implementation of regulation.

For three decades Japanese auto producers, supported by the Japanese government, deployed with extraordinary success market and nonmarket strategies to access the small and fragmented but rapidly growing car markets of Southeast Asia. The last half-decade has presented a series of unexpected challenges, including extended recession and financial reform in Japan; the lingering effects of the financial crisis in Southeast Asia; and the entry of new competitors from South Korea, North America, and Europe. These pressures have split the industry into two. Leaders Toyota and Honda have defended and extended traditional Japanese production networks. Weaker players such as Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Suzuki have accepted subordination to the leading western firms, which are rationalizing their Japanese partners and using them to enter Japan and other Asian markets. This article explores production, trade, and investment data, industrial policies toward autos in Japan and Southeast Asia, and brief case studies of Toyota and Nissan to illustrate the challenges to, and varying responses of, Japanese auto producers in developing Asia. These firms remain committed to Southeast Asia, but the days of Japanese dominance are drawing to a close.

The private sector clearly has an increasingly important and well-defined role to play in slowing the flow of technology and preventing the provision of enabling services to states pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and destabilising military capabilities. Exporters of proliferation-sensitive technology are frequently targeted by Iran and other countries. These countries are highly dependent on technology from the international market place to sustain their WMD and military programmes. Compliance with export controls only goes someway to ensuring that proliferation is prevented; a form of “over-compliance” is required to ensure that goods are not transferred to programmes of concern. This paper uses a significant quantity of primary data to consider the costs of compliance and over-compliance, the drivers for such processes, and the relationship between the national authority and firms and how this could be improved.

The Trade Related Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS) has had a profound effect on industrialization and innovation, as well as access to medicines in cases of public health crisis such as HIV/AIDS. However, compliance with TRIPS has varied in developing countries, despite heightened international pressure. For instance, Brazil has pursued a coherent approach to its HIV/AIDS health crisis, while India has failed to take care of its HIV patients despite late compliance with the TRIPS agreement and the presence of business firms that produce the generic medicines for HIV/AIDS. This article suggests that divergence in TRIPS compliance is the result of a linkage politics, in which global variables (global rules, global supply chains and global networks) reach into the domestic political economy to alter the interests and capabilities of domestic actors. Indian pharmaceutical firms have developed external and export interests that lower incentives for the Indian state to design a nationally relevant public health policy, while the Brazilian health movement with its societal and external linkages puts pressure on the Brazilian state to defend the interests of its HIV patients even at the cost of patents. We conclude by suggesting that linkage politics is better at helping us understand compliance with international agreements than existing explanations, with important consequences for the effectiveness of international institutions.

Executive pay regulation is widely discussed as a measure to reduce financial mismanagement in corporations. We show that the professional team sports industry, the only industry with substantial experience in the regulation of compensation arrangements, provides valuable insights for the regulation of executive pay. Based on the experience from professional sports leagues, we develop implications for the corporate sector regarding the establishment and enforcement of executive pay regulation as well as the level, structure, and rigidity of such regulatory measures.

The Philippines was among the fastest-growing economies averaging within the 6.5 percent GDP growth in the past five years. However, the COVID-19 crisis brought major disruptions to the Philippine economy as growth, employment, and overall productivity fell into recession levels along with the declaration of a nationwide lockdown. As the pandemic resulted in a series of business closures, supply chain breakdowns, and massive job cuts, the private sector was forced to confront the challenges brought by the pandemic including its threat to business continuity and survival. This article presents the private sector's assessment of the pandemic's impact on the Philippine economy along with their views on the national pandemic response and the extent of public-private collaborations in countering the effects of COVID-19. Following the insights and experiences shared by industry leaders and other corporate executives, this article also discusses pivots in corporate strategy along with a significant shift in corporate mindset toward new ways of doing business and fulfilling their responsibilities in society.

This paper analyzes the evolution of corporate governance and regulation in privatized telecommunication companies in the four largest EU economies. A political-economy approach is used to test the validity of the convergence hypothesis, which posits that globalization should produce convergence in business practices, ownership patterns, and regulatory frameworks. While there are signs that the structure of ownership and monitoring in continental Europe is adopting some of the features of the Anglo-Saxon arms-length governance system, corporate decisions remain shaped by durable national institutions and distinctive political traditions regarding the role of the corporation in society, the “just” level of executive remuneration, the concept of universal service, and the involvement of the state in corporate restructuring.

Rhetoric from both domestic and international policy actors equated foreign direct investment and robust business growth in Sierra Leone with an exit from fragility. To the contrary, the trajectory of private sector development experienced from 2002 to 2014 contributed to Sierra Leone's socio-political challenges, replicating in the contemporary period dynamics of grievance and exclusion that were root causes of the country's endemic instability and then civil war. This study challenges the practices and refines the ideas underlying the prevailing vision for business-led development in Sierra Leone and other fragile states. It links extensive documentation of the role of business in Sierra Leone with peacebuilding and statebuilding frameworks to present a novel perspective on the mechanisms of action of private sector development in contexts of persistent fragility. In doing so, it provides a foundation on which further theoretical propositions for the ordering of business-state relations in support of transitions from fragility to peaceful development can be developed and tested.

This article examines the relationship between the global financial crisis and Corporate Social Responsibility reporting of financial services firms. We challenge the view in existing studies that firms, when faced with economic hardship, tend to jettison CSR commitments. Instead, and building on insights regarding the institutional determinants of CSR, we argue that firms are constrained in their ability to abandon CSR by the extent to which they are subject to intense public scrutiny by regulators and the news media. We test this argument in the context of the European sovereign debt crisis drawing on a unique dataset of 170 firms in 15 different countries over a six-year period. Controlling for a battery of alternative explanations and comparing financial service providers to firms operating in other economic sectors, we find considerable evidence supporting our argument. Rather than abandoning CSR during times of economic hardship, financial industry firms ramp up their CSR commitments in order to manage their public image and foster public trust in light of intense public scrutiny.

The article investigates how major changes in national economic policies, and in associated forms of state-business relations, produce pro-business local governance arrangements. It places the emphasis on the politics of state-business relations that revolve around the distribution of public resources. It aims to explain, in particular, how these dynamics unfold in the developing countries where neoliberal reforms are implemented under conditions of political instability and weak policy capacity of the state. The article focuses on the political mobilization of the local bourgeoisie through local business associations, as the major force behind the rise of pro-business local governance. It indicates that the emergent form a pro-business local governance scheme, especially when led by local business associations, will depend upon a) the degree of political autonomy of the local bourgeoisie from the national political actors (i.e, their distance to party politics); b) the composition of its constituency/supporters (or the class coalition behind it); c) the degree of their dependency on public resources. The arguments are elaborated in the case of the city of Gaziantep, Turkey.

Rulings made by the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement body have, since the organization's creation in 1995, significantly advanced global economic liberalization. The response of business has been varied and far from uniformly supportive of the WTO agenda. The reason stems from the fact that adjusting to liberalization measures is easier in some industries than in others. The response is premised on the strategic alternatives available within an industry. Through examining antidumping (AD) elements of the European Union (EU) trade policy regime in the context of two European industries - chemicals and textiles - we find that both are under severe competitive pressure, due to WTO-induced market liberalization. However, the responses taken by companies within the respective industries are very different. We suggest that while WTO activity catalyzes industry evolution, the form of that adjustment is highly industry specific. In the case of textiles, the disaggregation of the industry value chain allows for a variety of product and locational adjustment strategies. In contrast, the chemicals industry is nationally based, reliant on intellectual property for competitive advantage and structurally limited in its ability to adopt a wide range of adjustment strategies. Therefore, in the absence of alternative strategy options, EU chemical companies lobby for rule harmonization in the WTO.

For many, transnational capital is one of the most important driving forces of economic globalization; yet, we know little about what determines cross-border portfolio investments. In addition to recent economic literature's focus on information asymmetries as one key determinant of cross-border investment, this study brings in a political aspect to the field of international trade in assets. The –race to the bottom’ thesis connects domestic economic policies to investment decisions and argues that capital is more likely to move towards economies characterized by economic liberalism; political institutions are also relevant for portfolio investments, because democratic institutions often provide more credible protection against predatory practices. In this study, I model bilateral portfolio investments as a function of economic policies, political institutions, and levels of transparency of sending and receiving countries as well as important international connections. Empirical findings indicate the importance of transparency to attract portfolio investments. Moreover, transnational portfolio investments are only sensitive to some fiscal policy indictors and only within the OECD countries. Therefore, for non-OECD countries, there is still ‘room to move’ in maneuvering different aspects of fiscal policies. Finally, I find that investors care about the nature of political institutions as democratic institutions tend to be associated with higher levels of portfolio investment inflows. This is good news for developing countries that have undergone or are in the process of democratization. In addition to democratizing for peace, increased foreign capital further incentivizes a progression towards democratization.

Scholars of international relations and global governance are increasingly interested in the transnational commercial arbitration system. So far, they have tended to characterize the system as a form of private global governance. However, using a combination of empirical and legal analysis, this article draws attention to the critical role of the state in the transnational commercial arbitration system, and shows that both rule-making and enforcement in the system depend largely on interactions between private and public actors. By treating arbitration as a form of private governance, scholars run the risk of obscuring these interactions and hindering their understanding of how transnational economic activity is governed. This article therefore argues for a modest reorientation of global governance scholarship on transnational commercial arbitration in a direction that focuses more closely on private-public interaction. More broadly, this article suggests that understanding interactions between private and public actors is a key to understanding global governance in general, and it raises doubts about the analytical desirability of a sharp distinction between private and public forms of global governance.

Historical institutionalist research has long struggled to come to terms with agency. Yet injecting agency into historical-institutionalist accounts is no easy task. If institutions are structuring agents’ actions, while they are simultaneously being structured by these very agents’ behavior, the ontological status of institutions remains unclear. Hence, most historical-institutional accounts, at the conceptual level, tend to downplay the role of agency. However, in this way, they also remain incomplete. Following the “coalitional turn” in historical institutionalism, we develop a new account of institutional change and stability that awards a central role to agency. At the heart of our approach is the notion that both stability and change in institutions presuppose constant coalition building by organized entrepreneurial actors. However, for several reasons, such coalition building is complicated, which ultimately leads to institutional stability. In addition, we argue that relevant state agencies actively shape whether the incumbent coalition or the challenger coalition prevails. We illustrate the potential of our actor-centered approach to institutional change by analyzing the reform of commercial training in Switzerland, tracing developments from the beginning of the 1980s until today.