In recent years a range of public policy (Howlett 2000) and international relations (Cutler et al., 1999; Hurd, 1999; Haufler, 2001) scholars have devoted attention to the emergence of voluntary (Kernaghan 1999; Prakash 1999), market-based, and “private” regulatory regimes that have emerged to address matters of concern to global civil society that previously were largely addressed through state-centered public policy instruments and processes.

This paper considers whether highly concentrated industries are better represented in the political process, as Olson's Logic of Collective Action suggests, and, if they are, whether this is so for the reasons that the Logic claims. It begins with a review and critique of the quantitative literature that has largely tried and failed to substantiate Olson's view. The bulk of the paper consists of five longitudinal case studies of firms that dominate or have dominated industries: IBM, Intel, Microsoft, America Online, and Cisco. The cases suggest that there is merit to the Olsonian view, but that alone it does not constitute an adequate political theory of the concentrated industry or the dominant firm. Additional variables drawn from organizational and institutional theory need to be incorporated into such a theory, including variables that bear on the allocation of attention, threat perception, and information flow within dominant firms.

The increasing trend towards the internationalization of the world economy coupled with the liberalizing agenda of international institutions and Western governments has profound implications for the delivery of health and other welfare services. As governments pursue policies which extend the scope for the involvement of private companies in the delivery of welfare services, processes of internationalization are likely to become increasingly important to such services as multinational providers emerge. This article begins the process of developing a systematic understanding of the relationships between the structure of welfare states, the social and economic policies of governments and international institutions, and the strategies and interests of private companies. It is argued that it is the particular mix of direct state provision, tax/subsidy, and regulation in the welfare state formation that provides the opportunities for, or barriers to, the expansion of internationalizing private providers of healthcare. This argument is illustrated through a case study of the current process of reform in the British healthcare system, where a relative shift away from direct state provision towards subsidizing and regulating private providers is facilitating a process of internationalization.

This study of Japanese consumer electronic networks in North America challenges conventional wisdom on the pervasiveness of keiretsu ties in Japanese production networks abroad. The consumer electronics industry poses hard questions to current views on the relationship between keiretsu and FDI not only because of the more modest internationalization of subcontractors, but more interestingly, because Japanese electronic production networks overseas remained remarkably closed to outside suppliers even in the absence of keiretsu commitments that could constrain purchasing decisions. This article offers a comparison of domestic subcontracting practices in the Japanese automobile and consumer electronic industries, a discussion of the internationalization of electronic part makers, and an analysis of the sourcing strategies of Japanese firms in North America. The article highlights the impact of the non-market environment in Japanese FDI strategies since Japanese companies embarked on foreign production in North America as a direct response to export caps imposed by the American government and/or tighter regional integration rules adopted in NAFTA. Revealingly, Japanese automobile and electronic firms diverged in their reliance on subcontracting firms to meet the more stringent demands for regional production.