Woll Firm Interests

How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5017-1149-7
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Cornell Studies in Political Economy

Firms are central to trade policy-making. Some analysts even suggest that they dictate policy on the basis of their material interests. Cornelia Woll counters these assumptions, arguing that firms do not always know what they want. To be sure, firms lobby hard to attain a desired policy once they have defined their goals. Yet material factors are insufficient to account for these preferences. The ways in which firms are embedded in political settings are much more decisive. Woll demonstrates her case by analyzing the surprising evolution of support from large firms for liberalization in telecommunications and international air transport in the United States and Europe. Within less than a decade, former monopolies with important home markets abandoned their earlier calls for subsidies and protectionism and joined competitive multinationals in the demand for global markets. By comparing the complex evolution of firm preferences across sectors and countries, Woll shows that firms may influence policy outcomes, but policies and politics in turn influence business demands. This is particularly true in the European Union, where the constraints of multilevel decision-making encourage firms to pay lip service to liberalization if they want to maintain good working relations with supranational officials. In the United States, firms adjust their sectoral demands to fit the government's agenda. In both contexts, the interaction between government and firm representatives affects not only the strategy but also the content of business lobbying on global trade.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Woll, Cornelia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft

Über Autor(innen)

WollCornelia:
Cornelia Woll is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Paris and Co-Director of MaxPo and LIEPP. She is the author of The Power of Inaction: Bank Bailouts in Comparison and Firm Interests: How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade, both from Cornell, and coeditor of Economic Patriotism in Open Economies.