Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on actual threats, the risks of those threats, and the actors' perceptions and expectations of those risks and responses. Nationalism is a polysemous concept, but this chapter uses it in its broadest sense. Tensions and conflicts are evident in various channels of interaction, especially in legal and policy arenas, namely the regulatory environment, accounting practice, corporate law, anti-trust law and, above all, taxation law. In particular, the subject of international taxation has been studied by international business scholars and legal scholars. As taxes on companies are levied within the legal frameworks of individual sovereign states, the premise underlying the actions undertaken by firms to cope with the political risks associated with taxation was that it was possible to distinguish between those jurisdictions which offered favourable conditions.