City Research Online

Abstract

While organized business is a key actor in regulatory politics, its influence is often conditional on the level of unity or conflict occurring within the business community at any given time. Most contemporary regulatory policy interventions put pressure on normal mechanisms of business unity, since they are highly targeted and sector-specific. This raises the question of how business unity operates across a highly variegated economic terrain in which costs are asymmetric and free-riding incentives are high. In the paper we empirically assess patterns of business unity within regulatory policymaking across different regulated sectors. Our analysis utilizes data from hundreds of regulatory policy proposals, and business community reactions to them in the telecommunications, energy, agriculture, pharmaceutical and financial sectors over a variety of institutional contexts. We find considerable empirical support for the ‘finance capital unity’ hypothesis – the notion that the financial sector enjoys more business unity than do other regulated sectors of the economy. When the financial sector is faced with new regulations, business groups from other sectors frequently come to its aid.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Pagliari, S. & Young, K. Capital United? Business Unity in Regulatory Politics and the Special Place of Finance. Regulation and Governance, which is published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rego.12098. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance J Political Science
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > International Politics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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