Cornelia Woll   Firm Interests How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade     Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. 208 pages | ISBN 978-0-8014-4609-2 | $39.95  (cloth)     Order book directly from Cornell University Press.

 

Abstract | Contents | Author

 

 

Abstract

 

Firms are central to trade policy-making. Some analysts even suggest that they dictate policy on the basis of their material interests. Cornelia Woll counters these assumptions, arguing that firms do not always know what they want. To be sure, firms lobby hard to attain a desired policy once they have defined their goals. Yet material factors are insufficient to account for these preferences. The ways in which firms are embedded in political settings are much more decisive.
 
Woll demonstrates her case by analyzing the surprising evolution of support from large firms for liberalization in telecommunications and international air transport in the United States and Europe. Within less than a decade, former monopolies with important home markets abandoned their earlier calls for subsidies and protectionism and joined competitive multinationals in the demand for global markets. By comparing the complex evolution of firm preferences across sectors and countries, Woll shows that firms may influence policy outcomes, but policies and politics in turn influence business demands. This is particularly true in the European Union, where the constraints of multilevel decision-making encourage firms to pay lip service to liberalization if they want to maintain good working relations with supranational officials. In the United States, firms adjust their sectoral demands to fit the government's agenda. In both contexts, the interaction between government and firm representatives affects not only the strategy but also the content of business lobbying on global trade.

 

 

Contents

1 Free-Marketeers despite Themselves?
2 Business Interests in Political Economy
3 When Trade Turns into Regulatory Reform
4 Basic Telecommunication Services
5 International Air Transport
6 Who Captures Whom?
7 Business Influence and Democratic Decision-Making
Appendix: Interviews Conducted
Bibliography
Index

 

Author

 
Cornelia Woll is is a Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po Paris, France.