When Business Speaks: Political Entrepreneurship, Discourse and Mobilization in American Partisan Regimes

Abstract

The political activism of American business as a class has surged and ebbed at various historical moments. Variations in both business and countervailing political mobilization should be approached as problems of collective interpretation and action. To explain the historical patterns of class-wide business activism, we need to look at the dynamics of partisan regimes in American politics. Partisan leaders, not businesses or other policy-seekers themselves, have the strongest incentives to absorb the transaction costs associated with either broad-scale business or countervailing collective action. When partisan entrepreneurs see an opportunity to alter the distribution of power at the national level, they engage in a discursive exercise to remold business or oppositional interests and undertake the mobilization of these interests.

The New Political Economy of the Macroprudential Ideational Shift

“…As Blyth has pointed out, before agents can respond to a crisis they have to have some idea what caused it and ideas in this context can act to reduce the 'Knightian' uncertainty that accompanies unique events, by providing a diagnosis of those events. In many respects, this period represented a period of exceptional crisis politics, during which routine calculations of interest became upset by dramatic events, with macroprudential ideas providing an explanation of a confusing situation that also reconfigured perceptions of interest and allowed agents to redefine their understanding of their relationship to the crisis (Polsky, 2000, Blyth, 2002. During this period MPR became established as a normative and political priority, not only amongst the leaders and ministers of the G20, but also became diffused and established in the work programmes of the more technical committees of the BCBS, the FSB, the BIS, national central banks and even public-private policy communities consisting of major industry representatives such as the G30.…”

Business collective action and the Australian mining industry's tax revolt: A comment on McKnight and Hobbs

“…In this context, 'political entrepreneurs' emerge, who 'can sometimes work out an arrangement that is better for all concerned than any outcome that could emerge without entrepreneurial leadership or organization' (Olson 1975: 176). Polsky (2000) builds on Olson's framework in highlighting 'daunting conditions' for business collective action. Specifically, he identifies three necessary conditions: first, the perception of fundamentally different economic circumstances, 'signifying the exhaustion of the pre-existing political economy'; second, the creation of a 'common interpretation' among business leaders of their problems and a suitable response; and third, the willingness of some political actors 'to absorb the costs of mobilizing business for collective action ' (2000: 460).…”

Self-Regulation by Associations: Collective Action Problems in European Environmental Regulation

“…Such factors may be exogenous events; for example, severe environmental damages caused by individual industries aroused public protest, which were transported into the political arena by Green parties and ultimately led to public action. 1 Other drivers include the role of business entrepreneurs (Bell 2008), the number of players involved, with fewer actors facilitating collective action within associations (Polsky 2000), and the diffusion of norms of appropriate behavior among sectoral associations. These diffusion processes may be driven by underlying competitive mechanisms or by the diffusion of rules of appropriate behavior (Simmons and Elkins 2004) and induce firms and associations to engage in self-regulation in order to reduce environmental damage.…”