We rely on NGOs to monitor the ethical practices of governments and for-profit firms and to undertake many humanitarian tasks that public and private actors will not do. While we are critical of public and private sector failures, we do not reflect enough on the credibility of the NGOs which take their place. Can we be sure that products NGOs label as child-labor free are in fact so, that the coffee labeled as 'fair trade' is farmed in sustainable ways, or that the working conditions monitored by NGOs are safe and that the wages are reasonable? Can we know that humanitarian organizations are, in fact, using our donations to alleviate human suffering rather than pursuing other goals? This book explores the problems of establishing the credibility of NGO activities as they monitor working conditions, human rights and elections and provide finance through microcredit institutions, development aid and emergency assistance.

We rely on NGOs to monitor the ethical practices of governments and for-profit firms and to undertake many humanitarian tasks that public and private actors will not do. While we are critical of public and private sector failures, we do not reflect enough on the credibility of the NGOs which take their place. Can we be sure that products NGOs label as child-labor free are in fact so, that the coffee labeled as 'fair trade' is farmed in sustainable ways, or that the working conditions monitored by NGOs are safe and that the wages are reasonable? Can we know that humanitarian organizations are, in fact, using our donations to alleviate human suffering rather than pursuing other goals? This book explores the problems of establishing the credibility of NGO activities as they monitor working conditions, human rights and elections and provide finance through microcredit institutions, development aid and emergency assistance.

"Peter Gourevitch and James Shinn brilliantly question the received wisdom about state regulation of corporate governance in this resolutely empirical and resolutely political book. They challenge arguments that countries can't change and that business dominates policymaking, showing that what determines a nation's regulatory system is the particular coalition that has emerged between workers, owners, and managers. This book should be required reading for students of corporate governance in the United States and beyond."--Frank Dobbin, Harvard University, author of "Forging Industrial Policy: United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age"

"Peter Gourevtich and James Shinn are here onto one of the important inquiries of economic development today: To understand how the largest firms are run, why they are owned as they are in different nations, and what explains the variation-some nations with deep stock markets and some without. Much of the academic writing to date focuses on the economics of finance and the underlying legal structure. Get the law right, it's widely thought, and financial markets will flourish. Less attention has been paid to how, whether, and to what extent finance and law are both surrounded by a nation's politics; in short, why it sometimes is so hard to get the law right. Gourevitch and Shinn bring to bear on this subject today's thinking in political science, reaching closer to what seems to be where the basic causes of corporate governance variation around the world lie-not just in economics and law, but in political institutions and preferences."--Mark Roe, Harvard University, author of "Strong Managers, Weak Owners: The Political Roots of AmericanCorporate Finance" and "Political Determinants of Corporate Governance"

"This seminal book underlines the vital political importance of corporate governance, a subject typically viewed only from legal and business perspectives. It will become a classic in political economy."--Peter J. Katzenstein. Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Cornell University

"Many comparative corporate governance studies like to pit bank-based systems against market-based systems, or civil-law against common-law countries. Gourevitch and Shinn make a compelling case that the reality of corporate governance is much too rich and complex to fit into these simple categories. They paint a fascinating picture of the evolution of corporate governance in Asia, Europe, and North America as driven primarily by changing political coalitions and ideologies, pension reform, privatization, and globalization."--Patrick Bolton, Princeton University, coauthor of "Contract Theory"

"A major contribution by leading scholars of corporate governance, this book brings together insights from economics, political science and law. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the relationship between governance and development, it sheds helpful new light on the key debate about whether and how legal origin is destiny."--Simon Johnson, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

""Political Power and Corporate Control" is the first serious, book-length political science treatment of the two-way interaction between corporate form and politics. There is nothing comparable."--Merritt Fox, Michael E. Patterson Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law