Business is one of the major power centres in modern society. The state seeks
to check and channel that power so as to serve broader public policy objectives. However,
if the way in which business is governed is ineffective or over burdensome, it may become
more difficult to achieve desired goals such as economic growth or higher levels of
employment. In a period of international economic crisis, the study of how business and
government relate to each other in different countries is of more central importance than
ever.
These relationships have been studied from a number of different disciplinary
perspectives - business studies, economics, economic history, law, and political science -
and all of these are represented in this handbook. The first part of the book provides an
introduction to the ways in which five different disciplines have approached the study of
business and government. The second section, on the firm and the state, looks at how these
entities interact in different settings, emphasising such phenomena as the global firm and
varieties of capitalism. The third section examines how business interacts with government
in different parts of the world, including the United States, the EU, China, Japan and
South America. The fourth section reviews changing patterns of market governance through a
unifying theme of the role of regulation. Business-government relations can play out in
divergent ways in different policy and the fifth section examines the contrasts between
different key arenas such as competition policy, trade policy, training policy and
environmental policy.
The volume provides an authoritative overview with chapters by leading
authorities on the currentstate of knowledge of business-government relations, but also
points to ways in which this work might be developed in the future, e.g., through a
political theory of the firm.
Professor David Coen is Professor of Public Policy at University
College London. Prior to joining UCL he held appointments at the London Business School
and Max Planck Institute in Cologne and was awarded a PhD at the European University
Institute, Florence. In recent years he has been a Fulbright distinguished scholar at the
Centre for European Studies, Harvard University and visiting fellow at Max Planck
Institute, Cologne. His research is recently embedded in the development of models and
processes of EU public policy and business government relations. Recent books include
Refining Regulatory Regimes: Utilities in Europe (Edward Elgar, 2005) with Adrienne
Hertier; EU Lobbying: Theoretical and Empirical Developments (Routledge, 2007); and
Lobbying the European Union: Institutions, Actors and Processes (OUP, 2009) edited with
Jeremy Richardson. Professor Wyn Grant is Professor of Politics at the University of
Warwick. He has written on government-business relations since the 1970s, including a
path-breaking study of the CBI with David Marsh (1977) and a well-regarded book on
Business and Politics in Britain. (1987, 2nd edition 1993). He has also written
extensively on trade policy, agricultural policy, economic policy and environmental
policy. He is a member of the executive committee of the International Political Science
Association and was formerly chair of the UK Political Studies Association. His more
recent research has been based on interdisciplinary cooperation with biological scientists
in projects on biological alternatives to chemical pesticides and the management of cattle
diseases. Professor Graham Wilson is Professor of Political Science at BostonUniversity
and is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
where he taught for twenty-five years. He was educated in the UK and began his career at
the University of Essex. He has studied business and politics for the last thirty years
and is the author of Business and Politics: A Comparative Introduction which has appeared
in three editions. He has edited Governance and The British Journal of Political Science.
750 pages, Hardcover