Nationalistic political rhetoric: measurement and preliminary insights

While nationalistic political rhetoric has become a critical concern for international business, the research in this area has lagged because of the unavailability of a representative measure. In this study, I introduce a largely unexplored source of data for international business research: Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), and explain how GDELT can be used to operationalize politicians' use of nationalistic rhetoric across the world. After discussing the data and the operationalization of the measure, I offer some preliminary insights. They reveal that the rise of nationalistic political rhetoric is not a recent phenomenon but a consistent theme over the last three decades. Contrary to suggestions in the literature, it is not low-income or less developed environments but countries with higher income and well-developed institutions where nationalistic rhetoric is more visible and where it strongly deters FDI. The measure advanced in this study offers a renewed understanding of global sociopolitical risks. It also contributes to institutional theory by explicating how politicians use non-bureaucratic influence to affect informal institutions.