Quiet Politics and Business Power
Corporate Control in Europe and Japan

Does democracy control business, or does business control democracy? The book looks at how companies are bought and sold.

Pepper D. Culpepper (Author)

9780521134132, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 November 2010

248 pages, 17 b/w illus. 19 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.3 cm, 0.35 kg

'Quiet Politics and Business Power is an immensely thoughtful and stimulating book that should be read by all scholars of comparative political economy, and is of particular interest to those who wish to better understand contemporary changes in corporate governance in the industrialized world.' ILR Review

Does democracy control business, or does business control democracy? This study of how companies are bought and sold in four countries - France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands - explores this fundamental question. It does so by examining variation in the rules of corporate control - specifically, whether hostile takeovers are allowed. Takeovers have high political stakes: they result in corporate reorganizations, layoffs and the unraveling of compromises between workers and managers. But the public rarely pays attention to issues of corporate control. As a result, political parties and legislatures are largely absent from this domain. Instead, organized managers get to make the rules, quietly drawing on their superior lobbying capacity and the deference of legislators. These tools, not campaign donations, are the true founts of managerial political influence.

1. Corporate control and political salience
2. Patient capital and markets for corporate control
3. The managerial origins of institutional divergence in France and Germany
4. The Netherlands and the myth of the corporatist coalition
5. Managers, bureaucrats, and institutional change in Japan
6. The noisy politics of executive pay
7. Business power and democratic politics.

Subject Areas: International business [KJK], Business & management [KJ], Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]