Quiet Politics and Business Power

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.

Author Biography

Pepper D. Culpepper is Professor of Political Science at the European University Institute. He was previously on the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of Creating Cooperation and coeditor of Changing France and The German Skills Machine. His work has appeared in International Organization, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Revue Française de Science Politique, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, West European Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Public Policy, and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, among others. Culpepper was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University and received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.