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When Business Speaks: Political Entrepreneurship, Discourse and Mobilization in American Partisan Regimes

The political activism of American business as a class has surged and ebbed at various historical moments. Variations in both business and countervailing political mobilization should be approached as problems of collective interpretation and action. To explain the historical patterns of class-wide business activism, we need to look at the dynamics of partisan regimes in American politics. Partisan leaders, not businesses or other policy-seekers themselves, have the strongest incentives to absorb the transaction costs associated with either broad-scale business or countervailing collective action. When partisan entrepreneurs see an opportunity to alter the distribution of power at the national level, they engage in a discursive exercise to remold business or oppositional interests and undertake the mobilization of these interests.

Key Words: business • partisan regime • political entrepreneurship • political mobilization

Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 12, No. 4, 455-476 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/0951692800012004006


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