Abstract
This paper explores the role and strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in processes of host-country democratic reversals, understood as the replacement of a system of democratic governance with one of autocratic governance. Drawing on historical studies that employed archival research, we explore these strategies in two dimensions: geographic (host and home country levels) and temporal (ex-ante and ex-post the democratic reversal). Our analysis highlights how MNEs leverage political resources and corporate diplomacy to influence institutional environments and create coalitions that bring about the end of a democratic regime and its replacement by an authoritarian one. We include the participation of MNEs in covert actions as part of their corporate diplomatic activities and the role of MNEs as legitimating actors of authoritarian regimes in their home and host countries. We derive a framework for understanding MNEs’ participation in democratic reversals and our findings allows us to challenge the assumption that MNEs prefer liberal democracies over autocratic regimes.