American Business and Political Power

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226764656
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis American Business and Political Power by : Mark A. Smith

Download or read book American Business and Political Power written by Mark A. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people believe that large corporations wield enormous political power when they lobby for policies as a cohesive bloc. With this controversial book, Mark A. Smith sets conventional wisdom on its head. In a systematic analysis of postwar lawmaking, Smith reveals that business loses in legislative battles unless it has public backing. This surprising conclusion holds because the types of issues that lead businesses to band together—such as tax rates, air pollution, and product liability—also receive the most media attention. The ensuing debates give citizens the information they need to hold their representatives accountable and make elections a choice between contrasting policy programs. Rather than succumbing to corporate America, Smith argues, representatives paradoxically become more responsive to their constituents when facing a united corporate front. Corporations gain the most influence over legislation when they work with organizations such as think tanks to shape Americans' beliefs about what government should and should not do.

Fluctuating Fortunes

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Publisher : Beard Books
ISBN 13 : 1587981696
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (879 download)

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Book Synopsis Fluctuating Fortunes by : David Vogel

Download or read book Fluctuating Fortunes written by David Vogel and published by Beard Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dynamics of business-government relations in the United States between 1960 and 1988.

Political Power in America

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438476957
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Power in America by : Anthony R. DiMaggio

Download or read book Political Power in America written by Anthony R. DiMaggio and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing major political institutions such as Congress, the courts, the presidency, and the media, this book chronicles how the interests of affluent Americans—particularly business, professional, and corporate interests—dominate over those of "average" citizens. Anthony R. DiMaggio examines American political behavior, as it relates to lobbying, citizen activism, media consumption, and voting, to demonstrate how the public is often misinformed and manipulated regarding major political and economic matters. However, record public distrust of the government and the increasing popularity of mass protests suggest that most Americans are deeply unhappy with the political status quo, and many are willing to fight for change. Political Power in America details this interplay between a political system dominated by the affluent few and the rise of mass political distrust and protest. It offers information and tools needed to better understand the democratic deficit in American politics, while providing opportunities for discussing what we might do to address the mounting crisis of declining democracy.

Political Power and Corporate Control

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400837014
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Power and Corporate Control by : Peter A. Gourevitch

Download or read book Political Power and Corporate Control written by Peter A. Gourevitch and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-20 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

Affluence and Influence

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691153973
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Affluence and Influence by : Martin Gilens

Download or read book Affluence and Influence written by Martin Gilens and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why policymaking in the United States privileges the rich over the poor Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy—but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings are staggering: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans' preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not. Gilens shows that representational inequality is spread widely across different policy domains and time periods. Yet Gilens also shows that under specific circumstances the preferences of the middle class and, to a lesser extent, the poor, do seem to matter. In particular, impending elections—especially presidential elections—and an even partisan division in Congress mitigate representational inequality and boost responsiveness to the preferences of the broader public. At a time when economic and political inequality in the United States only continues to rise, Affluence and Influence raises important questions about whether American democracy is truly responding to the needs of all its citizens.

The American Political Economy

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316516369
Total Pages : 487 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Political Economy by : Jacob S. Hacker

Download or read book The American Political Economy written by Jacob S. Hacker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

Modern Corporation and American Political Thought

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Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271044136
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Modern Corporation and American Political Thought by : Scott Bowman

Download or read book Modern Corporation and American Political Thought written by Scott Bowman and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

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Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0871403846
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (714 download)

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Book Synopsis We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by : Adam Winkler

Download or read book We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights written by Adam Winkler and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

The Business of America is Lobbying

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Author :
Publisher : Studies in Postwar American Po
ISBN 13 : 0190215518
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Business of America is Lobbying by : Lee Drutman

Download or read book The Business of America is Lobbying written by Lee Drutman and published by Studies in Postwar American Po. This book was released on 2015 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corporate lobbyists are everywhere in Washington. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 represent business. The largest companies now have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them. How did American businesses become so invested in politics? And what does all their money buy? Drawing on extensive data and original interviews with corporate lobbyists, The Business of America is Lobbying provides a fascinating and detailed picture of what corporations do in Washington, why they do it, and why it matters. Prior to the 1970s, very few corporations had Washington offices. But a wave of new government regulations and declining economic conditions mobilized business leaders. Companies developed new political capacities, and managers soon began to see public policy as an opportunity, not just a threat. Ever since, corporate lobbying has become increasingly more pervasive, more proactive, and more particularistic. Lee Drutman argues that lobbyists drove this development, helping managers to see why politics mattered, and how proactive and aggressive engagement could help companies' bottom lines. All this lobbying doesn't guarantee influence. Politics is a messy and unpredictable bazaar, and it is more competitive than ever. But the growth of lobbying has driven several important changes that make business more powerful. The status quo is harder to dislodge; policy is more complex; and, as Congress increasingly becomes a farm league for K Street, more and more of Washington's policy expertise now resides in the private sector. These and other changes increasingly raise the costs of effective lobbying to a level only businesses can typically afford. Lively and engaging, rigorous and nuanced, The Business of America is Lobbying will change how we think about lobbying-and how we might reform it.

The Political Power of the Business Corporation

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Author :
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1849807329
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (498 download)

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Book Synopsis The Political Power of the Business Corporation by : Stephen Wilks

Download or read book The Political Power of the Business Corporation written by Stephen Wilks and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The large business corporation has become a governing institution in national and global politics. This study offers a critical account of its political dominance and lack of democratic legitimacy.

Politics at Work

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190629894
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Politics at Work by : Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

Download or read book Politics at Work written by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employers are increasingly recruiting their workers into politics to change elections and public policy-sometimes in coercive ways. Using a diverse array of evidence, including national surveys of workers and employers, as well as in-depth interviews with top corporate managers, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez's Politics at Work explains why mobilization of workers has become an appealing corporate political strategy in recent decades. The book also assesses the effect of employer mobilization on the political process more broadly, including its consequences for electoral contests, policy debates, and political representation. Hertel-Fernandez shows that while employer political recruitment has some benefits for American democracy-for instance, getting more workers to the polls-it also has troubling implications for our democratic system. Workers face considerable pressure to respond to their managers' political requests because of the economic power employers possess over workers. In spite of these worrisome patterns, Hertel-Fernandez found that corporate managers view the mobilization of their own workers as an important strategy for influencing politics. As he shows, companies consider mobilization of their workers to be even more effective at changing public policy than making campaign contributions or buying electoral ads. Hertel-Fernandez closes with an array of solutions that could protect workers from employer political coercion and could also win the support of majorities of Americans. By carefully examining a growing yet underappreciated political practice, Politics at Work contributes to our understanding of the changing workplace, as well as the increasing power of corporations in American politics. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between inequality, public policy, and American democracy.

Building the Empire State

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812247167
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Building the Empire State by : Brian Phillips Murphy

Download or read book Building the Empire State written by Brian Phillips Murphy and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the state of New York, home to the first American banks, utilities, canals, and transportation infrastructure projects, Building the Empire State examines the origins of American capitalism by tracing how and why business corporations were first introduced into the economy of the early republic.

The People's Network

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812245695
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The People's Network by : Robert MacDougall

Download or read book The People's Network written by Robert MacDougall and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-01-08 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bell System dominated telecommunications in the United States and Canada for most of the twentieth century, but its monopoly was not inevitable. In the decades around 1900, ordinary citizens—farmers, doctors, small-town entrepreneurs—established tens of thousands of independent telephone systems, stringing their own wires to bring this new technology to the people. Managed by opportunists and idealists alike, these small businesses were motivated not only by profit but also by the promise of open communication as a weapon against monopoly capital and for protection of regional autonomy. As the Bell empire grew, independents fought fiercely to retain control of their local networks and companies—a struggle with an emerging corporate giant that has been almost entirely forgotten. The People's Network reconstructs the story of the telephone's contentious beginnings, exploring the interplay of political economy, business strategy, and social practice in the creation of modern North American telecommunications. Drawing from government documents in the United States and Canada, independent telephone journals and publications, and the archives of regional Bell operating companies and their rivals, Robert MacDougall locates the national debates over the meaning, use, and organization of the telephone industry as a turning point in the history of information networks. The competing businesses represented dueling political philosophies: regional versus national identity and local versus centralized power. Although independent telephone companies did not win their fight with big business, they fundamentally changed the way telecommunications were conceived.

The Forgotten Americans

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300230362
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Forgotten Americans by : Isabel Sawhill

Download or read book The Forgotten Americans written by Isabel Sawhill and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation's economic inequalities One of the country's leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society--economic, cultural, and political--and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. Although many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and the federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Rooted Globalism

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 025306256X
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Rooted Globalism by : Kevin Funk

Download or read book Rooted Globalism written by Kevin Funk and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the concept of nationality apply to the economic elite, or have they shed national identities to form a global capitalist class? In Rooted Globalism, Kevin Funk unpacks dozens of ethnographic interviews he conducted with Latin America's urban-based, Arab-descendant elite class, some of whom also occupy positions of political power in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Based on extensive fieldwork, Funk illuminates how these elites navigate their Arab ancestry, Latin American host cultures, and roles as protagonists of globalization. With the term "rooted globalism," Funk captures the emergence of classed intersectional identities that are simultaneously local, national, transnational, and global. Focusing on an oft-ignored axis of South-South relations (between Latin America and the Arab world), Rooted Globalism provides detailed analysis of the identities, worldviews, and motivations of this group and ultimately reveals that rather than obliterating national identities, global capitalism relies on them.

Hijacking the Agenda

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Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610449053
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Hijacking the Agenda by : Christopher Witko

Download or read book Hijacking the Agenda written by Christopher Witko and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are the economic interests and priorities of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by the U.S. Congress, while the economic interests of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies favorable to their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating that such economic bias exists to illuminate precisely how and why economic policy is so often skewed in favor of the rich. The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by several hundred members of Congress to examine the influence of campaign contributions on how the national economic agenda is set in Congress. They find that legislators who received more money from business and professional associations were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those who received more money from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to lower- and middle-class constituents, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because issues discussed in Congress receive more direct legislative action, such as bill introductions and committee hearings. While unions use campaign contributions to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions. The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the financial influence of the wealthy enables them to advance their economic agenda. In each case, the authors examine the balance of structural power, or the power that comes from a person or company’s position in the economy, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. The authors show how big business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry sought deregulation in the late 1990s, resulting in the passage of a bill eviscerating New Deal financial regulations. Likewise, when business interests want to preserve the policy status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the agenda, as when inflation eats into the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves low-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, can use their resources to shape policy responses if conditions are right, they lack structural power and suffer significant resource disadvantages. As a result, wealthy interests have the upper hand in shaping the policy process, simply due to their pivotal position in the economy and the resulting perception that policies beneficial to business are beneficial for everyone. Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power operates through the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the interests of the wealthy and marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of inequality.

Agendas and Instability in American Politics

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226039536
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Agendas and Instability in American Politics by : Frank R. Baumgartner

Download or read book Agendas and Instability in American Politics written by Frank R. Baumgartner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.