Hostname: page-component-68945f75b7-9klrw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-05T19:53:24.612Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Science and the Study of Corporate Power: A Dissent from the New Conventional Wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

David Vogel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Over the last fifteen years political scientists have become much more critical of the role that business plays in American politics. Two decades ago business was primarily regarded as another interest group; now many scholars perceive a tension between the large business corporation and the principles and practices of pluralist democracy.

This article challenges this new ‘conventional wisdom’ by critically examining the recent writings of Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom. Dahl regards the corporation as undemocratic because its managers are not accountable to its employees. Yet, the corporation is hardly unique in this regard: not one single institution in our society – including the government itself – is governed by those who work for it. Lindblom contends that business occupies a privileged position in capitalist democracies. But he exaggerates the role investment decisions play in the performance of the economy, underestimates the options available to politicians to manipulate business decisions and fails to appreciate that businessmen are not unique in requiring inducements to perform their social role. The article concludes by suggesting that while corporations do exercise considerable political power, both its scope and magnitude can be satisfactorily analysed within the framework of interest-group politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 385 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967)Google Scholar; Engler, Robert, The Brotherhood of Oil (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Reagan, Michael, The Managed Economy (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

2 See Kariel, Henry, The Decline of American Pluralism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; McConnell, Grant, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)Google Scholar; Lowi, Theodore, The End of Liberalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969).Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Greenberg, Edward, Serving the Few (New York: Wiley, 1974)Google Scholar; Katznelson, Ira and Kesselman, Mark, The Politics of Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975)Google Scholar; Nadel, Mark, Corporations and Political Accountability (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1976)Google Scholar; Garson, G. David, Power and Politics in the United States (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1977)Google Scholar; Parenti, Michael, Power and the Powerless (New York: St Martin's Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Dolbeare, Kenneth, Democracy At Risk: The Politics of Economic Renewal (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1984)Google Scholar; Greenberg, Edward, Capitalism and the American Political Ideal (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1985).Google Scholar

4 Dahl, Robert and Lindblom, Charles, Politics, Economics, and Welfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. xxxvi.Google Scholar

5 Dahl, Robert, After the Revolution: Authority in a Good Society (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

6 Dahl, Robert, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar

7 Lindblom, Charles E., Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. xxxvi, xxxvii.Google Scholar

8 Andrain, Charles F., ‘Capitalism and Democracy Reappraised’, Western Political Quarterly, XXXVII (1984), 652–4Google Scholar; Blowers, Andrew, ‘Master of Fate or Victim of Circumstance – The Exercise of Corporate Power in Environment Policy-Making’, Policy and Politics, XI (1983), 393–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dahl, Robert, ‘On Removing Certain Impediments to Democracy in the United States’, Political Science Quarterly, XCII (1977), 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dye, Thomas, ‘Oligarchic Tendencies in National Policy-Making: The Role of the Private Policy-Planning Organizations’, Journal of Politics, XL (1978), 309–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph, Lawrence B., ‘Democratic Revisionism Revisited’, American Journal of Political Science, XXV (1981), 160–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph, Lawrence B., ‘Corporate Political Power and Liberal Democratic Theory’, Polity, XV (1982), 246–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lindblom, Charles E., ‘The Market as Prison’, Journal of Politics, XLIV (1982), 324–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Litt, Edgar, ‘Why Democratic Pluralism Reduces Inequality in the United States’, Polity, XVII (1984), 396–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manley, John, ‘Neopluralism: A Class Analysis of Pluralism I and Pluralism II’, American Political Science Review, LXXVII (1983), 368–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsh, David, ‘Interest Group Activity and Structural Power: Lindblom's Politics and Markets’, West European Politics, VI (1983), 3–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moran, Michael, ‘Politics, Banks, and Markets: An Anglo-American Comparison’, Political Studies, XXXII (1984), 173–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nadel, Mark, ‘The Hidden Dimension of Public Policy: Private Governments and the Policy-Making Process’, Journal of Politics, XXXVII (1975), 2–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plotkin, Sidney, ‘Corporate Power and Political Resistance: The Case of the Energy Mobilization Board’, Polity, XVIII (1985), 115–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Preston, Larry, ‘Freedom, Markets, and Voluntary Exchange’, American Political Science Review, LXXVIII (1984), 959–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scholzman, Kay, ‘What Accent the Heavenly Chorus? Political Equality and the American Pressure System’, Journal of Politics, XLVI (1984), 1006–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vogel, David, ‘The Power of Business in America: A Reappraisal’, British Journal of Political Science, XIII (1983), 19–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Menninger, David, ‘Business and Politics’, PS, XVIII (1985), 210.Google Scholar

10 Manley, , ‘Neopluralism’Google Scholar; Preston, ; ‘Freedom’.Google Scholar

11 Dahl, , ‘On Removing’, p. 8.Google Scholar

12 Dahl, , Dilemmas, p. 198.Google Scholar

13 Dahl, , Dilemmas, p. 198.Google Scholar

14 Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, p. 171.Google Scholar

15 Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, p. 175.Google Scholar

16 Lindblom, , ‘The Market as Prison’, p. 326.Google Scholar

17 Lindblom, , ‘The Market as Prison’, p. 330.Google Scholar

18 For a detailed description and analysis of this phenomenon, see Vogel, David, ‘A Case Study of Clear Air Legislation: 1967–1981’, in Bock, Betty et al. , The Impact of the Modern Corporation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 309–86.Google Scholar

19 According to The Economist, ‘two-thirds of all new jobs created in the United States between 1968 and 1976 were created by companies with 20 or fewer employees. This trend has continued.… About 1.4 new businesses are now being created in America each year’; ‘In Praise of Pizza Parlours’, The Economist, 17 05 1986, p. 75.Google Scholar

20 Lindblom, , ‘The Market’, p. 326.Google Scholar

21 Dahl, and Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, p. xxxvii.Google Scholar

22 Lindblom, , ‘The Market’, p. 327.Google Scholar

23 See Vogel, David, ‘The “New” Social Regulation in Historical and Comparative Perspective’, in McCraw, Thomas K., ed., Regulation in Perspective (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School, 1981), pp. 155–86.Google Scholar

24 See Vogel, David, National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

25 Schlesinger, Arthur M., The American as Reformer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 80.Google Scholar

26 Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, p. 205.Google Scholar

27 See, for example, Thurow, Lester, The Zero-Sum Solution (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1985.Google Scholar

28 Orren, Karen, ‘Union Politics and Postwar Liberalism in the United States, 1946–1979’, in Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen, eds, Studies in American Political Development, vol. 1 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 215–56.Google Scholar

29 Manley, , ‘Neopluralism’, p. 378.Google Scholar

30 See Vogel, , ‘The Power of Business in America’.Google Scholar

31 Lindblom, , ‘The Market as Prison’, p. 331.Google Scholar