ABSTRACT
During the 1980s considerable changes became evident in the forces affecting multinational enterprises (MNEs) and national government policies. Many of these changes began in the early 1970s but were reinforced in the 1980s. In this paper, these changes and their impact on the strategies of firms will be outlined. The main part of the paper deals with the nature of the changes in public policies towards MNEs. I argue that there is a convergence of policies on MNEs but it is not necessarily, as many believe, in the direction of non-intervention. The new national policies appear to be structural responses to the changed environment, responses which raise questions of policy effectiveness at least as large as those raised by the older policies. The emphasis in this paper is on MNEs and policies in the developed market-oriented countries, particularly the European Community, the United States and Japan.
