Abstract
The problems of examining the patterns of business group activity in the political processes of modern political systems are formidable. Firstly, there is the difficulty of identifying the groups themselves. In the capitalist countries there is a large, highly visible private sector of the economy where decisions on production, investment, employment and the like are taken by individual firms. There are different patterns of ownership, varying from small family businesses to large domestically based corporations; there are multi-national companies and industries owned or partly owned by the state itself. There is a variety of organisations seeking to unite these disparate elements of what is nonetheless widely regarded as the ‘business community’.
‘Great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses.’ (Edmund Burke)
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Notes to Chapter 3
See, for example, D. Vogel, ‘The Power of Business in America: A Reappraisal’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 13, no. 1, January 1983, pp. 19–43.
L. Panitch, ‘Trade Unions and the Capitalist State’, New Left Review, no. 125, January–February 1981, pp. 21–43.
Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet Books, 1973).
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See, for example, Roy Laird, The Soviet Paradigm (New York: Free Press, 1970).
Jerry Hough is a leading proponent of such a view: see Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (London: Harvard University Press, 1979) especially chapter 14.
See, for example, Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia (London: Pluto Press, 1974);
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For example, H. H. Ticktin, ‘Towards a Political Economy of the USSR’, Critique, vol. 1, no. 1, spring 1973, pp. 20–41.
Wyn Grant and David Marsh, The Confederation of British Industry (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977) p. 33.
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On the City see Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social Development (London: Macmillan, 1984) especially chapters 2–3.
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See M. Unseem and A. McCormack, ‘The Dominant Segment of the British Business Elite’, Sociology, vol. 15, no. 3, August 1981, pp. 381–406;
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See C. Mellors, The British MP. A Socio-Economic Study of the House of Commons (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1979) pp. 60–74;
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See G. B. Galloway, History of the House of Representatives (New York: Crowell, 1968) pp. 34–6.
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For additional examples see G. Causer, ‘Private Capital and the State in Western Europe’, in S. Giner and M. S. Archer (eds) Contemporary Europe (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). In 1985 the British government appointed Peter Levene, a former defence contractor, to head the arms procurement section of the Ministry of Defence; the appointment was controversial because it violated civil service recruitment procedures.
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Ibid., p. 147.
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David Coates, Labour in Power (London: Longman, 1980) pp. 131–42.
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See A. Sampson, The Sovereign State. Secret History of ITT (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).
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Christopher Bobinski in the Financial Times, 8 August 1984.
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See J. Story, ‘Capital in France: the Changing Face of Patrimony?’ West European Politics, vol. 6, no. 2, April 1983, pp. 87–127.
M. Moran, ‘Banks and Politics: An Anglo-American Comparison’, paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association of the UK, April 1983, p. 26.
See Leslie Holmes’s study of the USSR and the GDR: The Policy Process in Communist States. Politics and Industrial Administration (London: Sage, 1981).
See, for example, E. Suleiman, Elites in French Society (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978) especially chapter 9.
Alec Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983) p. 177.
Gertrude Schroeder, ‘The Soviet Economy on a Treadmill of Reforms’, in Soviet Economy in a Time of Change, Papers, US Congress Joint Economic Committee (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979) p. 313.
D. Marsh and G. Locksley, ‘Capital in Britain: Its Structural Power and Influence over Policy’, West European Politics, vol. 6, no. 2, April 1983, p. 59.
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© 1986 Alan R. Ball and Frances Millard
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Ball, A.R., Millard, F. (1986). Businessmen and Bureaucrats. In: Pressure Politics in Industrial Societies. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18257-2_3
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