
What Are the Different Political Systems? As a result, global businesses monitor and evaluate the political and legal climate in countries in which they currently operate or hope to operate in the future.īefore we can evaluate the impact on business, let’s first look at the different political and legal systems. Nevertheless, countries still have the ability to regulate or strong-arm companies into abiding by their rules and regulations. The Internet has started to change this, as sellers and buyers have easier access to each other. Until recently, governments were able to directly enforce the rules and regulations based on their political and legal philosophies.

China’s different set of political and legal guidelines made Google choose to discontinue its mainland Chinese version of its site and direct mainland Chinese users to a Hong Kong version. In the case study in Chapter 1 "Introduction", you discovered how US-based Google had to deal with the Chinese government’s restrictions on the freedom of speech in order to do business in China. Why should businesses care about the different political and legal systems around the world? To begin with, despite the globalization of business, firms must abide by the local rules and regulations of the countries in which they operate.

