Do ties between political parties and businesses harm or benefit the development of market institutions? The post-communist transition offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore when and how ...networks linking the polity and the economy support the development of func-tional institutions. A quantitative and qualitative analysis covering eleven post-socialist countries combined with detailed case studies of Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania documents how the most successful post-communist countries are those in which dense networks link polit-icians and businesspeople, as long as politicians are constrained by intense political competition. The comparison of original network data sets shows how this combination allowed Poland to emerge with stable institutions. Bulgaria, marred by weak institutions, corruption, and violence, cautions us that in developing economies intense political competition alone is harmful in the absence of dense personal and ownership networks. Indeed, as Romania illustrates, networks are so critical that their weakness is not mitigated even by low political competition. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.
NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATED
Since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that the rights of things-money and corporations-matter more than the rights of people, America has faced a crisis of ...democracy. In this timely and thoroughly updated second edition, Jeff Clements describes the strange history of this bizarre ruling, its ongoing destructive effects, and the growing movement to reverse it. He includes a new chapter, "Do Something!," showing how-state by state and community by community-Americans are using creative strategies and tools to renew democracy and curb unbalanced corporate power. Since the first edition, 16 states, 160 members of Congress, and 500 cities and towns have called for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and the list is growing. This is a fight we can win!
If the current economic malaise accomplishes nothing else, it should help awaken us all to the realization that our country has been on a path of self-destructive behavior for several decades—a ...reversal of the progressive path that had made major gains in economic and political equality for a large majority of the U.S. population starting in the 1870s. It is John McDermott’s purpose in this ambitious book to explain why that reversal happened, how society has changed in dramatic ways since the 1960s, and what we can do to reverse this downward spiral. In Part 1 he endeavors to lay out the overall narrative of change from the 1960s to the present, emphasizing how a novel social structure came to be developed around corporate America to form what he calls “corporate society.” Part 2 analyzes what the nature of this corporate society is, how it is a special type of “fabricated” structure, and why it came to dominate society generally, eventually including the government and university systems, which themselves became increasingly corporatized. The aim of Part 3 is to outline a path of reform that can, if all its parts can be integrated sufficiently to be effective, put us on the path to restarting the progressive movement.
The Philippines is commonly understood to occupy an anomalous position in Southeast Asian area studies. This essay explores the logic, politics, and logistics of the inclusion and exclusion of the ...Philippines in or from Southeast Asian studies. Perspectives on and from the Philippines can help rethink and refine concepts of "region" by emphasizing, rather than glossing over, the transregional connections and histories that link the Philippines and its localities to its neighbors, to various regions, and to the world. Area studies need not be hobbled by an intellectual parochialism that cordons off analysis at any given local, national, regional, and transregional scale.
Researchers in international development have long argued that the high costs of
doing business harms prosperity in developing countries, a claim that invites the
question of why governments impose ...these costs and why societies fail to enact
reforms reducing them. This book seeks to answer the question by looking at the case
of Brazil, a large and highly unequal economy riddled with state-imposed transaction
costs. By delving into the political dynamics underlying a costly business
environment, this book provides the reader with novel insights into crony capitalism
and inequality. It argues that the root cause of a costly business environment is
the collusion between political actors, bureaucrats and business insiders.
Politicians and bureaucrats relish their discretion over rules and policies as a
power resource, since they can increase or decrease the costs of doing business
faced by firms and sectors. Business insiders collude with government agents to
access the loopholes that decrease the cost of doing business, thus gaining a
competitive edge over outsiders. This gives the insiders weaker preferences for
reforms that could decrease the overall cost of doing business. By pursuing their
self-interest, these actors create a low-level equilibrium that perpetuates crony
capitalism and inequality to the detriment of overall prosperity. The book makes its
case with a sophisticated combination of formal modeling, quantitative analyses and
in-depth case studies of tax policy and of the pharmaceutical and agricultural
sectors in Brazil. Observers have declared the need for reforms that improve the
business environment in developing countries for a long time. However, the findings
presented in this book suggest they might have underestimated the challenge ahead.
Scholars and policy-makers in international development, business politics and
political economy will be interested in the innovative perspective of this book.
The subprime mortgage crisis has been blamed on many: the Bush Administration, Bernie Madoff, the financial industry, overzealous housing developers. Yet little scrutiny has been placed on the ...American legal system as a whole, even though parts of that system, such as the laws that regulate high-risk lending, have been dissected to bits and pieces. In this innovative and exhaustive study, Steven A. Ramirez posits that the subprime mortgage crisis, as well as the global macroeconomic catastrophe it spawned, is traceable to a gross failure of law.The rule of law must appropriately channel and constrain the exercise of economic and political power. Used effectively, it ensures that economic opportunity isn't limited to a small group of elites that enjoy growth at the expense of many, particularly those in vulnerable economic situations. In Lawless Capitalism, Ramirez calls for the rule of law to displace crony capitalism. Only through the rule of law, he argues, can capitalism be reconstructed.
How does government partisanship influence sovereign credit ratings of developed countries? Given the convergence of fiscal and monetary outcomes between left and right governments in the past ...decades, credit rating agencies (CRAs) should in principle not discriminate according to ideology. However, we hypothesize that CRAs might lower ratings for left governments as a strategy to limit negative policy and market surprises as they strive to keep ratings stable over the medium term. A panel analysis of Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch’s rating actions for 23 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1995 to 2014 shows that left executives and the electoral victory of nonincumbent left executives are associated with significantly higher probabilities of negative rating changes. We find no evidence of similar systematic partisan bias in spreads on government bonds, but spreads do adjust to partisan-biased downgrades. This suggests that CRAs may introduce partisan discrimination into sovereign credit markets.
Based on an original large-N dataset of individual Ukrainian oligarchs and qualitative evidence, this article tests competing perspectives on the political power of big capital. We find, ...surprisingly, that neither the assumption of direct power by the oligarchs nor the mobility of oligarchic assets helps tycoons protect their fortunes against shocks. Instead, the indirect strategies of party support and media ownership significantly enhance business wealth. Empirically, we profile postcommunist oligarchs by examining the political and economic activities of 177 oligarchs from 2006 to 2012. Theoretically, we contribute to the literatures on instrumental and structural power of capital, and on the interactions between extreme wealth, rule of law, and democracy. In doing so, we contrast the logic of flexibility, according to which oligarchs benefit from political adaptability and deniability, with the logic of commitment compensation, according to which oligarchs benefit from direct power when the rule of law is weak.
Political finance scholars have paid little attention to the partisan preferences of business donors. This was because business donors were overwhelmingly concerned with the left-right dimension and ...enjoyed stable relationships with centre-right parties. These parties are increasingly tempted by economic nationalism. This new ideological flux provides an opportunity to measure the extent to which donors are party identifiers or react to changes in the policy space. Dramatic shifts in party policy on both the left-right and globalisation dimensions and a relatively transparent political finance regime make the United Kingdom a particularly apposite case to study this question. I analyse 19,000 donations to the Conservative Party and show that business donors reacted strongly to recent shifts on both the left-right and globalisation dimensions. Thus, centre-right parties may not be able to rely on party identification and their left-right position to maintain business funding. Economic nationalism is likely to cost centre-right parties money.
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