TY  - JOUR
TI  - The Politics of Explanatory Nationalism and the Evolution of the United Nations Agenda on Multinational Enterprises
T2  - INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS RESEARCH JOURNAL
IS  - INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS RESEARCH JOURNAL
KW  - Explanatory nationalism
KW  - multinational enterprises
KW  - United Nations
KW  - international organisations
KW  - hegemony
KW  - corruption
AB  - Social problems in the global South are often explained by reference to domestic decisions or "institutional quality" in the Southern countries, while there are also prominent criticisms of such "nationalist explanations". Crucially, the dispute over correct mode of explanation is not only epistemological, but also political, as has been often noted in analyses of hegemony. This paper develops such ideas about "hegemonic" forms of explanation by analysing how an explanatory tendency becomes institutionalised in the operating logic of international organisations. We analyse as a case study the long-term developments within the UN in the field of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We follow the process in which an agenda focused on the regulation of MNEs shifted into the direction of focusing on local institutional quality and emphasising "partnerships" instead of regulation. The analysis demonstrates how political momentum and external challenges affect explanatory tendencies, and generally the deep impact of organisational embeddedness of these tendencies. 
AU  - Teppo Eskelinen
AU  - Matti Ylönen
UR  - https://iorj.hse.ru/en/2020-15-3/412586540.html
PY  - 2020
SP  - 176-201
VL  - 15