Interest in the power and influence of business is probably higher today than at any time in the past. Academics, journalists and political activists warn of the grave dangers posed to nations and their citizens by large corporations; governments regularly remind their citizens of the policy pressures they face from business under conditions of global competitiveness; and transnational corporations use, with increasing regularity, the threat of taking their investments elsewhere should national policies contravene their interests. The gap between the public and private sectors, meanwhile, has become so narrow that few public policy decisions and public infrastructure investments are undertaken without the inputs of business. Despite the challenges these developments present for social policy, however, their implications for social policy have been under-researched. While questions regarding the opinions and influences of business have been raised with increasing frequency, few studies have investigated these issues in any detail, let alone attempted to provide convincing answers to the questions they raise. This book represents one of the first real attempts to investigate business views and influence on social policy outcomes.

Business influence on social policy

Explanations documenting the development of social policies have been wide ranging in every way bar one: the interests and institutions of business have generally been overlooked. Explanations have included:

• • the moral conscience of the middle classes and of government (Fraser, 1984, pp 134-7);

• • the breakdown of former welfare institutions (Flora and Alber, 1981);

• • the reliance of competitive markets on a healthy, well-educated workforce (Peden, 1985, pp 11-13);

• • the extension of citizenship rights and the empowerment of individuals (Marshall, 1950);

• • the dynamic of state bureaucracies (Niskanen, 1971);

• • and the political mobilisation – as well as the fear of the political mobilisation – of labour (Navarro, 1978, 1989; Korpi, 1983; Castles, 1986, 1989).

Those theorists who have discussed the role of business in welfare development have tended to draw on taken-for-granted assumptions about the position of capital in relation to social policy. Waged labour has been portrayed largely as pro-welfare, capital as anti-welfare (see, for example, Navarro, 1989, pp 388-93). Social policies are said to develop out of these conflicting interests, reflecting the winners or losers on either side of the class divide. The interests of capital as a whole have been grouped together in a united mass, and the many fractional interests neglected. The situation was summarised by Hay in 1977 (pp 435-9):