Centimanes versus Titans: right-wing populist governments’ treatment of foreign multinationals in East Central Europe

IMEG member Gerhard Schnyder just published a co-authored paper with Andreas Nölke (Goethe University Frankfurt), Dori Sallai (LSE), and Daniel Kinderman (University of Delaware) based on research done for the NORFACE-funded POPBACK project.

In this paper we address nationalist populist governments’ puzzling treatment of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs). At times, these governments provide generous support for, at times they take aggressive action against foreign MNEs. Allegorically speaking, rather than using their one hundred hands to slay the Titans like the Centimanes of Greek mythology, nationalist populist governments use fifty hands of the state to support and fifty others to handicap foreign MNEs – the Titans of the modern world economy.

How can we explain the ambiguity of populist international business policy adopted by governments that adhere to economically nationalist rhetoric, ideologies, and goals?

We show that the desire to decrease the presence of foreign multinationals is common to national populist governments, but that desire is tempered by electoral fragility, the need for technology transfer, and limited alternative sources of foreign direct investment (FDI).

Our study contributes to our understanding of nationalist populist economic policy and has implications for assessments of political risk. Importantly, our work suggests that while most assessments of political risk are done at the country level, there is great variation at the sector level.

Importantly, we develop a framework that distinguishes an industry’s economic- from its political strategic value to the government (see table 1).

Our research suggests that political risk is highest for companies in sectors of high political strategic value – key to regime stability -, but where economic strategic value, which results primarily from inward technology transfer, is low. The media sector is a case in point. Where political strategic value is low but economic strategic value high – such as in the car manufacturing sector in Hungary and Poland, which relies heavily on inward technology transfer via German FDI – foreign MNEs generally face limited political risk.

As such our study suggests that assessments of firm political risk exposure should switch from a country-level focus to a focus on the sectoral level. This also implies that political risk assessments need to take into account how a government’s economic and political strategy impacts various sectors differently.

Reference

Nölke, A., Schnyder, G., Sallai, D., & Kinderman, D. (2026). Centimanes v. Titans: right-wing populist governments’ treatment of foreign multinationals in East Central Europe. New Political Economy, 1–23.

Download the open access article at https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2026.2624414