Strategic uses of the past and their liabilities: why government-pushed internationalization may fail

Abstract Governments push firms to internationalize not only through diplomacy and material incentives but also by shaping the environment in which investors, host governments, and local communities form judgments about cross-border opportunities. We conceptualize this process as government-pushed internationalization and examine how, in the Brazilian case (2003–2015), historical narratives became a central instrument for pursuing such strategies—and ultimately contributed to their failure. Drawing on a longitudinal historical case study of ProSAVANA, a flagship Brazilian agricultural cooperation scheme in Mozambique that eventually collapsed, we show how government-constructed narratives initially built broad support but also generated two strategic risks for enrolled firms: backfiring , as peripheral actors mobilized counter-narratives that transformed presumed advantages into liabilities, and blinding , a previously unidentified mechanism whereby reliance on historical narratives led policymakers to overlook institutional differences, alternative collective memories, and mounting risks. We reveal internationalization as a multi-stakeholder process in which diverse actors may contest official narratives and reframe opportunities as threats, thereby shaping the success or failure of government-pushed internationalization. We advance international business research by showing how governments use rhetorical history to enroll diverse stakeholders while explaining the risks such strategies create and why presumed historical advantages may ultimately become liabilities.