This article draws attention to an understudied phenomenon, transnational political alliances (TPA), which occur when multinational corporations cooperate with local companies to influence public policies of the host government. The article first explores the economic and political sources of TPAs, their structures, and the obstacles to their formation. It then examines TPAs in the context of China, a critical case because of the hostile political environment that discourages TPAs. However, the surprisingly common occurrence of TPAs in China indicates the power (...) of economic incentives for political cooperation yet also suggests the need for further studies of TPAs in a wide variety of economic and political settings. (shrink)

This article draws attention to an understudied phenomenon, transnational political alliances (TPA), which occur when multinational corporations cooperate with local companies to influence public policies of the host government. The article first explores the economic and political sources of TPAs, their structures, and the obstacles to their formation. It then examines TPAs in the context of China, a critical case because of the hostile political environment that discourages TPAs. However, the surprisingly common occurrence of TPAs in China indicates the power (...) of economic incentives for political cooperation yet also suggests the need for further studies of TPAs in a wide variety of economic and political settings. (shrink)

This article offers a rare study of the content and performance of political strategies in China’s highly institutionalized setting. A conceptual framework based on institutional theory findings is proposed to develop a set of expected political behavior. This is then confronted to data from a convenient sample of 233 firms. The results show that there are indeed recognizable patterns of political strategy, most of which are bent by the strong institutional environment toward accommodation rather than confrontation or defiance. The strategies (...) identified were found to be related to the nature of the firms’ available resources and to the firms’ ability to extract benefits or bend the government’s behavior in their favor. (shrink)

This article addresses how foreign subsidiaries formulate their relational political strategy by responding to the unique parameters of the economic and institutional environment in an emerging market in an attempt to improve their performance. To this end, the authors have developed a model that assesses economic environment antecedents characterizing an emerging market (regulatory distance, industry accessibility, environmental uncertainty, and economic development) as well as the performance consequence of the subsidiaries’ relational political strategy. A possible moderating effect of the firm’s reputation (...) in the host country and length of operations on the relationship between political strategy and local performance is also examined in the model. Our analysis of primary and secondary data concerning 358 foreign-invested enterprises in China generally supports this model. (shrink)

This article addresses how foreign subsidiaries formulate their relational political strategy by responding to the unique parameters of the economic and institutional environment in an emerging market in an attempt to improve their performance. To this end, the authors have developed a model that assesses economic environment antecedents characterizing an emerging market (regulatory distance, industry accessibility, environmental uncertainty, and economic development) as well as the performance consequence of the subsidiaries’ relational political strategy. A possible moderating effect of the firm’s reputation (...) in the host country and length of operations on the relationship between political strategy and local performance is also examined in the model. Our analysis of primary and secondary data concerning 358 foreign-invested enterprises in China generally supports this model. (shrink)

China does not have a federalist system of government. Nevertheless, with deepening reform and openness, China's political system in terms of central–local relations is functioning more and more like federalism. Federalism as a functioning system in China has been understudied. This paper defines the political system existing in China as defacto federalism, and attempts to explore the sources and dynamics of this defacto federalism. China's defacto federalism was mainly driven by two related factors, i.e. decentralization and globalization. This paper argues (...) that while economic decentralization in the 1980s led to the formation of defacto federalism, globalization since the 1990s has accelerated this process and generated increasingly high pressure on the Chinese leadership to institutionalize existing defacto federalism. (shrink)

As corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance, governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command-and-control policies to support it. As such, it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as New Governance policies, where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter-organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders. However, such (...) policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of CSR and its related issues, strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change. We explore New Governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context CSR and discuss the experiences with these methods in the European Union. (shrink)