Big Business And The State

In Big Business and the State Harland Prechel develops a conceptual framework that contrasts with prevailing definitions of the corporation. His analysis shows that corporate property rights and the legal basis of ownership are crucial to understanding corporate behavior. The book examines how historical transitions affected the three most significant corporate transformations in the last 110 years (1880s–1900s, 1920s–1930s, 1980s–1990s). During each period, in response to economic crisis, big business engaged in political behavior to pressure state managers to realign the institutional arrangements in which corporations were embedded. The historical multicausal method shows that economic crisis, managerial inefficiencies, dependence on external capital markets, and the political processes of redefining corporate property rights and corporate tax laws are crucial to understanding corporate transformation.

The disintegration of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998 and the fall of Soeharto put an end to the crude forms of centralised authoritarianism and economic protectionism that allowed large Chinese conglomerates to dom- inate Indonesia's private sector. Contrary to all expectations, most of the major capitalist groups, though damaged considerably by the Asian Crisis, managed to cope with the ensuing monumental political and economic changes, and now thrive again albeit within a new democratic environment. In this book Christian Chua assesses the state of capital before, during, and after the financial and political crisis of 1997/1998 and analyses the changing relationships between business and the state in Indonesia. Using a distinct perspective that combines cultural and structural approaches on Chinese big business with exclusive material derived from interviews with some of Indonesia’s major business leaders, Chua identifies the strategies employed by tycoons to adapt their corporations to the post-authoritarian regime and provides a unique insight into how state-business relationships in Indonesia have evolved since the crisis. Chinese Big Business in Indonesia is the first major analysis of capital in Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto, and will be of interest to graduate students and scholars of political economy, political sociology, economics and business administration as well as to practitioners having to do with Southeast Asian business and politics.

Written in nontechnical terms, Big Business and the Wealth of Nations explains how the dynamics of big business have influenced national and international economies in the twentieth century. A path-breaking study, it provides the first systematic treatment of big business in advanced, emerging, and centrally planned economies from the late nineteenth century, when big businesses first appeared in American and West European manufacturing, to the present. These essays, written by internationally known historians and economists, help one to understand the essential role and functions of big businesses, past and present.

Bringing together an international and multidisciplinary group of experts, this is the first comprehensive volume to analyze conglomerates and economic groups in developing countries and transition economies. Using sixteen in-depth case studies it provides a comparative framework for the study of contemporary process of privatization, economic and financial liberalization and neoliberal globalization. Exploring the various causes and economic, social and political effects of the rise of ‘big business’ in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe, the main issues that are examined include: the nature of contemporary economic concentration the relations between ‘local’ and ‘external’ investors the impact on development, and on economic and political control over its direction the new role of the state towards conglomerates and economics groups the effects of economic and political changes on the legitimacy of the state and large companies. This volume is perfect as either a textbook or supplementary reading for students at all levels, as well as researchers and governmental and non-governmental professionals working and studying in the fields of international business and economic development.

Much of the debate about development in the past decade pitted proponents of unfettered markets against advocates of developmental states. Yet, in many developing countries what best explains variations in economic performance is not markets or states but rather the character of relations between business and government. The studies in Business and the State in Developing Countries identify a range of close, collaborative relations between bureaucrats and capitalists that enhance elements of economic performance and defy conventional expectations that such relations lead ineluctably to rent-seeking, corruption, and collusion. All based on extensive field research, the essays contrast collaborative and collusive relations in a wide range of developing countries, mostly in Latin America and Asia, and isolate the conditions under which collaboration is most likely to emerge and survive. The contributors highlight the crucial roles played by capable bureaucracies and strong business associations.

This book debunks the rosy success story about South Korean economic development by analyzing how the state and businesses formed an alliance, while excluding labor, in order to attain economic development, and how these three entities were transformed in the process. The author analyzes the paradox of South Korean development from 1960 to 1990—a period during which the country experienced dramatic social, economic, and political changes. By reexamining South Korea's development through the collaboration and conflict between the state and the chaebol (big businesses), she illuminates the inherent limitations and problems of the developmental state.

This book presents a study of the complex relationship between the Russian state and big business during Vladimir Putin’s first two presidential terms (2000–2008). Based on extensive original research, it focuses on the interaction of Russia’s political executive with the ‘oligarchs’. It shows how Putin’s crackdown on this elite group led big business to accept new ‘rules of the game’ and how this was accompanied by the involvement of big business in policy formulation, particularly through the organisational vehicle of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP). It goes on to discuss why Yukos and its CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky were targeted by Russia’s political authorities and the resultant consequences, namely the end of the relatively successful framework via which state-business relations had been managed, and its replacement by fear and mutual distrust, along with a vastly expanded role for the state, and state-related actors, in the Russian corporate sector. The book explores all these developments in detail and sets them against the context of continued trends towards greater authoritarianism in Russia.

An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen. We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough. In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.