Centimanes v. Titans: right-wing populist governments’ treatment of foreign multinationals in East Central Europe
Journal: New Political Economy
Year: 2026

The treatment of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) by populist right-wing governments presents a puzzle: At times, these governments support, at times they take aggressive action against foreign MNEs. Allegorically speaking, rather than using their one hundred hands to slay the Titans like the Centimanes of Greek mythology, right-wing populist governments seem to use fifty hands of the state to support and fifty others to handicap foreign MNEs. How can we explain the ambiguity of populist