The Political Construction of Business Interests
Coordination, Growth, and Equality

The Political Construction of Business Interests recounts employers' struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development.

Cathie Jo Martin (Author), Duane Swank (Author)

9781107018662, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 March 2012

328 pages, 4 b/w illus. 15 tables
24.1 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'The Political Construction of Business Interests is an impressive book that takes on multiple issues and, in order to address them, mobilizes statistical estimations, case studies grounded in archival research, and interview data. Whatever controversies it ignites, however, this book is a major achievement. Vastly illuminating about the origins of business associations, it shows that those associations are important to a wide range of social outcomes about which we should all care.' Peter A. Hall, Harvard University

Many societies use labor market coordination to maximize economic growth and equality, yet employers' willing cooperation with government and labor is something of a mystery. The Political Construction of Business Interests recounts employers' struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development. Employers are most likely to support social investments in countries with strong peak business associations, that help members form collective preferences and realize policy goals in labor market negotiations. Politicians, with incentives shaped by governmental structures, took the initiative in association-building and those that created the strongest associations were motivated to evade labor radicalism and to preempt parliamentary democratization. Sweeping in its historical and cross-national reach, the book builds on original archival data, interviews and cross-national quantitative analyses. The research has important implications for the construction of business as a social class and powerful ramifications for equality, welfare state restructuring and social solidarity.

Introduction
1. Collective political engagement and the welfare state
2. The political origins of coordinated capitalism
3. The political origins of Danish employers' associations
4. British experiments in national employers' organization
5. Sectional parties, divided business in the United States
6. The origins of sector coordination in Germany
7. Twenty-first century breakdown: challenges to coordination in the post-industrial age
8. Institutional sources of firms' preferences for the welfare state
9. Employers, coordination, and active labor market policy in post-industrial Denmark
10. Employers, coordination, and active labor market policy in post-industrial Britain
11. The failure of coordination and rise of dualism in Germany
12. The political foundations of redistribution and equality
Conclusion: 13. Social solidarity after the crisis of finance capitalism.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]