The Political Power of Business - Structure and Information in Public Policy-Making (Hardcover)

Do corporations wield power over democratic politics? If so, how do they achieve this? And if business interests are so powerful, why do they sometimes seem to lose political battles?

Seeking answers these questions, the book investigates how business lobbyists employ in their political strategies privately held information about the likely effects of public policy. At the core of the book is a theoretical model that explains political influence as a function of in-formational and structural constraints on public policymaking. The central hypothesis is that advice from business interests systematically carries more weight with policymakers than other organized groups, because only information conveyed by business regularly addresses factors located the heart of the state-market nexus in democratic capitalist systems: the costs to policymakers that result from harming business, the economy, and, by implication, the economic basis of the state and the wellbeing of the electorate. Focusing on banking regulation and environmental politics, the model is tested empirically in a cross-national, triangulated research design involving a case study, a micro-quantitative analysis of elite survey data, and a macro-quantitative analysis of policy outcomes in twenty-three advanced industrialized countries.

This book examines to what extent business can get what it wants politically because firms and trade associations often know better how to assess the likely effects of policy than politicians and because firms' commercial, technical and investment decisions partly determine these effects. It will be of strong interest to students and researchers of political science, policymaking andbusiness studies.

General

Imprint:	Routledge
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Routledge Research in Comparative Politics
Release date:	December 2007
First published:	2008
Authors:	Patrick Bernhagen
Dimensions:	234 x 156 x 17mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	192
ISBN-13:	978-0-415-45105-5
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > General
LSN:	0-415-45105-1
Barcode:	9780415451055

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