Introduction: MNCs and their pathways of influence in global politics

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have been active for a very long time in global markets and they also play a leading role in global politics, although the latter side of their activity has been far more contentious and often difficult to map. The traditional and dominant focus on states and their interests and strategies has generally marginalized the role of corporations, or at least the study of them. The result is that while some might be tempted to declare that what is and is not possible in global politics is an answer along the lines of ‘it’s the economy, stupid’,1 it could be more accurate to say ‘it’s the MNCs, stupid!’ The role of MNCs needs to be considered when analyzing key issues in contemporary global politics. Of course, many alternative approaches exist, bringing the operations and interests of MNCs closer to our attention and informing research. However, scholarly work on MNCs tends largely to pull in two different directions. On the one hand, there is an economics and management literature concerned with analyzing the behavior of MNCs in terms of economic statistics and organizational forms. On the other hand, there is a politics and international relations literature that views their activities through the prisms of grand power politics. In the process, they go somewhat ‘missing’ between studies that detail a variety of economic and industrial properties of MNCs, versus those that discuss different dimensions of corporate power in terms of market forces, class relations, ideologies, national interests, international relations and so on. When it comes to political studies of MNCs the result is that ‘instead of mountains of scholarly achievement, we have a few oases in an arid landscape’ (Wilks, 2013, p. 2). While acknowledging that the various analyses of MNCs’ operations are enormously helpful and reveal important aspects of corporate conduct, the contributors to this collection aim to further bridge the extant scholarly cleavages to examine the many and intricate ways MNCs influence politics in the global realm. They combine firm-centered and institutional approaches and, as