Do foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) utilize the political experience of domestic firms that they have acquired? If so, why? Little is known about the ways in which foreign MNCs gain political influence outside their home countries. And yet, foreign MNCs that acquire or merge with politically active domestic firms may inherit host country- and firm-specific political influence mechanisms on day-one of entry. To test this idea, I assemble novel panel datasets of all American firms that completed mergers and acquisitions (M &A) while connected to an active Political Action Committee (PAC) or reported to lobby the U.S. government between 1997 and 2018. With these data, I show that the survival rates of connected PACs and lobbying relationships post-M &A are significantly higher for firms with a new foreign owner, compared with those with a new American owner. In addition, newly foreign-owned firms tend to maintain – or even increase – the intensity of political activities post-M &A. Finally, following cross-border M &A, I observe a greater lobbying emphasis on issue areas of interest to foreign MNCs such as trade, intellectual property rights, and telecommunications. One implication of this study is that MNCs may gain political leverage in other countries by acquiring politically active domestic firms.

外国跨国公司（MNC）是否利用其收购的国内企业的政治经验？如果是这样，为什么？人们对外国跨国公司如何在本国以外获得政治影响力的方式知之甚少。然而，收购或合并政治活跃的国内企业的外国跨国公司可能会在进入的第一天继承东道国和企业特定的政治影响力机制。为了测试这个想法，我收集了所有在 1997 年至 2018 年间完成并购 (M &A)、同时与活跃的政治行动委员会 (PAC) 相关或报告游说美国政府的美国公司的新颖面板数据集。通过这些数据，我的研究表明，与拥有新的美国所有者的公司相比，拥有新的外国所有者的公司在并购后关联的 PAC 和游说关系的存活率明显更高。此外，新成立的外资企业往往会在并购后维持甚至增加政治活动的强度。最后，在跨境并购之后，我发现游说活动更加重视外国跨国公司感兴趣的问题领域，例如贸易、知识产权和电信。这项研究的一个含义是，跨国公司可以通过收购政治上活跃的国内企业来获得在其他国家的政治影响力。