The Political Construction of Business Interests

'Why do employers cooperate with the state in some nations, but elsewhere resist its incursions? How do employers become not just economic, but political actors? Such are the questions grappled with in this methodologically sophisticated, massively documented study that impressively covers both sides of the Atlantic from the nineteenth century to the present.' Peter Baldwin, University of California, Los Angeles
'Why do the wealthy countries with the strongest business communities have the most generous social welfare systems and the least inequality? Using rich historical analysis coupled with sophisticated statistical studies, Martin and Swank offer a fresh and compelling answer. They show that business interests are shaped by the structure of democratic governance. This marvelous book challenges our most fundamental ideas about where group interests come from, and it has important, and unsettling, implications for the future of equality and democracy.' Frank Dobbin, Harvard University
'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