Non‐Market Strategy and Deglobalization: Firm–State Relations and the Historical Microfoundations of Corporate Political Activity

Abstract

This study examines deglobalization through the lens of non-market strategy (NMS), focusing on the antecedents and microfoundations of corporate political activity (CPA) in the global aluminium industry. Drawing on archival research and historical analysis, we challenge the prevailing view of deglobalization as a state-driven reversal of globalization. Instead, we reconceptualize it as a co-evolving process of firm–state relations, where multinational enterprises (MNEs) and governments jointly construct institutional arrangements. Our analysis demonstrates how MNEs leverage ideological alignments, elite networks, and long-term political capabilities to influence protectionist policies, trade governance, and national development agendas. We identify the microfoundations of CPA – ideological affinity, embedded agency, and networked trust – as critical to shaping institutional and policy outcomes with macroeconomic and geopolitical consequences. By tracing firm–state interactions across a century of global change, we demonstrate how CPA functions as a historically constituted practice through which firms exercise both ideological and political agency. In reframing deglobalization as not merely an external constraint but a strategic outcome co-produced by business and state actors, this study extends non-market strategy theory. We highlight how deglobalization and globalization are not sequential opposites but intertwined processes, co-constructed through the persistent deployment of NMS and CPA.