Much of the debate about development in the past decade pitted proponents of unfettered markets against advocates of developmental states. Yet, in many developing countries what best explains variations in economic performance is not markets or states but rather the character of relations between business and government. The studies in Business and the State in Developing Countries identify a range of close, collaborative relations between bureaucrats and capitalists that enhance elements of economic performance and defy conventional expectations that such relations lead ineluctably to rent-seeking, corruption, and collusion. All based on extensive field research, the essays contrast collaborative and collusive relations in a wide range of developing countries, mostly in Latin America and Asia, and isolate the conditions under which collaboration is most likely to emerge and survive. The contributors highlight the crucial roles played by capable bureaucracies and strong business associations.

In Big Business and the State Harland Prechel develops a conceptual framework that contrasts with prevailing definitions of the corporation. His analysis shows that corporate property rights and the legal basis of ownership are crucial to understanding corporate behavior. The book examines how historical transitions affected the three most significant corporate transformations in the last 110 years (1880s–1900s, 1920s–1930s, 1980s–1990s). During each period, in response to economic crisis, big business engaged in political behavior to pressure state managers to realign the institutional arrangements in which corporations were embedded. The historical multicausal method shows that economic crisis, managerial inefficiencies, dependence on external capital markets, and the political processes of redefining corporate property rights and corporate tax laws are crucial to understanding corporate transformation.

When the state and business interact effectively they can promote a more efficient allocation of scarce resources, appropriate industrial policy and a more effective and prioritised removal of key obstacles to growth, than when the two sides fail to co-operate or engage in harmful collusion. This book, based on original empirical research undertaken in Africa and India, addresses what constitutes the effectiveness of state-business relations, what explains their formation and evolution over time and whether effective state-business relations matter for economic performance. Analysing the effects of state-business relations on economic performance at both the macro and micro levels, the book concludes that where effective state-business relations are established – either through formal or informal institutional patterns and relationships – the growth effects are generally positive. Establishing, sustaining and renewing effective state-business relations are political processes. The better organized the business community and the government are for purposes of such relations, the more effective state-business relations will be in negotiating growth enhancing policies. The book is of interest to researchers in the fields of development studies, management, economics and political science.

This wide-ranging, original account of the politics and economics of the giant military supply project in the North reconstructs an important but little-known part of Civil War history. Drawing on new and extensive research in army and business archives, Mark R. Wilson offers a fresh view of the wartime North and the ways in which its economy worked when the Lincoln administration, with unprecedented military effort, moved to suppress the rebellion. This task of equipping and sustaining Union forces fell to career army procurement officers. Largely free from political partisanship or any formal free-market ideology, they created a mixed military economy with a complex contracting system that they pieced together to meet the experience of civil war. Wilson argues that the North owed its victory to these professional military men and their finely tuned relationships with contractors, public officials, and war workers. Wilson also examines the obstacles military bureaucrats faced, many of which illuminated basic problems of modern political economy: the balance between efficiency and equity, the promotion of competition, and the protection of workers' welfare. The struggle over these problems determined the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars; it also redirected American political and economic development by forcing citizens to grapple with difficult questions about the proper relationships among government, business, and labor. Students of the American Civil War will welcome this fresh study of military-industrial production and procurement on the home front—long an obscure topic.

National oil companies are big business with about 80 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and they are crucial to the world’s energy supplies. They are giants, some of the world’s largest companies, measured by market capitalisation, cash flow and investment. Little is known about their modus operandi, how they make decisions about investment and production or about relations with their government-owners. However, it is known that they conduct business with a political mandate, often with multiple long-term objectives, broadly defined and hard to quantify. Unclear mandates give national oil companies leeway to pursue their own distinctive interests, apart from those of the government-owner. As investors, governments are less zealous than private investors. They generally observe multiple objectives, not only return on capital. Therefore, the senior management of national oil companies enjoy more discretionary power and consider longer time horizons than their counterparts in the private sector. The Oil Business and the State explains the practice of state ownership in a capital-intensive industry with high risks and high return, and how these companies act in a market with imperfect competition. This book looks to give readers more insight into the oil industry, into the background of oil exporting countries as well as the economic and political challenges confronting them, including problems of state ownership. The book discusses wider consequences of China replacing the United States as the world’s leading oil importer. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students in the fields of international business, management history, corporate governance, political economy and economic development of oil-rich countries.

List of Tables and Figures; List of Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Thinking Big Again; Chapter 1: From Crisis Ideology to the Division of Innovative Labour; Chapter 2: Technology, Innovation and Growth; Chapter 3: Risk-Taking State: From 'De-risking' to 'Bring It On!'; Chapter 4: The US Entrepreneurial State; Chapter 5: The State behind the iPhone; Chapter 6: Pushing vs. Nudging the Green Industrial Revolution; Chapter 7: Wind and Solar Power: Government Success Stories and Technology in Crisis; Chapter 8: Risks and Rewards: From Rotten Apples to Symbiotic Ecosystems; Chapter 9: So.