Techno-nationalism and capability development in the global pharmaceuticals industry, 1918–1970

Abstract Techno-nationalism intensifies deglobalisation and so presents new risks in international business, with government policy increasing multinational corporation (MNC) costs through targeting their technology inflows and outflows in various ways. However, recent scholarship in international business has focused exclusively on the current geopolitical tensions between the US and China. We adopt a longer-term perspective that permits us to offer a revised definition of techno-nationalism less embedded in the present-day context. We then review three episodes of historical techno-nationalism by the U.S. and U.K. governments targeting the acquisition of pharmaceuticals technological capabilities from the then-technological leaders between 1918 and 1970. This review suggests that the success of techno-nationalist policies was less associated with the absolute level of costs imposed on MNCs and more associated with: the absorptive capacities of the host economies’ domestic industries; the ease with which the targeted MNCs were able to develop mitigation strategies; and, our main contribution, the different mechanisms used and targets focused on by governments. We develop a typology of successful techno-nationalist policies from this historic survey to highlight that government policies might vary between those that differentiate between either technology-push or demand-pull mechanisms and those that focus on either firm-based or location-based targets.