Following the 2007–9 financial crisis, the EU strengthened its institutional apparatus for bank regulation, creating a trio of sectoral bodies, including the European Banking Authority (EBA). Various aspects of this new system have been studied, but to date, little is known about how banks engage with their new supranational regulator. We argue that such engagement fosters an interdependence between banks and regulators, thus contributing to the efficiency and robustness of the overall regulatory regime; but also that it is contingent on the regulator exhibiting the qualities of credibility, legitimacy, and transparency. These qualities are grounded in the domestic regulatory governance literature, but we suggest that they are rendered problematic by the complexities of the EU's multilevel system and, in particular, the overlap in competences between the EBA and the European Central Bank. We examine the EBA in the light of these criteria and find that banks’ engagement remains pitched towards established national regulators and the EU's legislative arena. This poses concerns for the efficacy of agency governance in the EU's regulatory regime for banking.

While the state remains the main unit of analysis in International Relations, the emergence of transnational actors and their integration into global governance have contributed to an opening of perspectives and issues. NGOs and multinational enterprises as well as their interaction in public-private-partnerships have become popular research objects. However, these partnerships are often assessed in terms of effectiveness which leads to juxtapositioning binding and effective versus non-binding and ineffective initiatives. Considering such an either/or-logic to be of limited insight, the article argues that current research on public-private-partnerships suffers from four conceptual difficulties: (1) an underspecified concept of effectiveness, (2) a missing discussion on the yardsticks chosen for assessments, (3) a tendency to (over-)generalize individual findings and (4) underlying yet seldom reflected actor assumptions. To help engage with these difficulties, the paper conceptualizes partnerships as social contexts. Within such contexts, dynamics influence corporate identity and action and create new awareness as well as new conduct. Such a perspective allows to go beyond weighing the effectiveness of binding versus the likelihood of non-binding initiatives. The argument is illustrated by analyzing the emergence, development, and impact of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights with respect to BP and Chevron.

This article asks how costly targeted trade sanctions imposed by the US government are for domestic firms. I argue that, as a result of sanctions, the firm value of US companies that have supply relationships with sanctioned entities is likely to suffer from lost revenue, reputational damage, and business model uncertainty. I test this expectation by applying an event study to the important case of targeted trade sanctions against Chinese technology companies. I find that sanctions against these companies reduced their US suppliers’ risk-adjusted stock returns by 220 basis points. Firm-level cross-sectional analysis shows that businesses with stronger ties to the sanctioned entities are more negatively affected, which supports the direct connection between sanctions and relevant suppliers. Measuring the domestic economic ramifications of sanctions for the sender country has been elusive. These findings, which are statistically and economically significant, indicate that US companies face notable costs from sanctions against internationally active firms.

State Supreme Courts have grown in importance during the last thirty years in the formation of public policy. Their judgements determine many aspects of constitutional law, tort reform, judicial selection, and campaign finance reform, among others. A vast body of literature has been developed that analyzes State Supreme Court decision making, which emphasizes the conditioning effects of the legal and institutional environment. This article expands on this previous work by incorporating the interaction of the judiciary with other government institutions, and applies the Positive Political Theory approach to law and legal institutions to the State Supreme Court. In addition, the neo-institutionalist literature of the selection process is incorporated to defend a systematic approach towards decision making. Towards that end, this article explores how judicial decisions are conditioned by institutional rules, resulting in a formal modeling of how the State Supreme Courts interact with political actors to form constitutional interpretation. This model includes the judicial selection process'retention or competitive reelection—and is extended to constitutional amendment rules, explaining how these two interact rather than acting independently. Finally, the hypothesis is tested that when State Supreme Court judges face retention elections and political preferences are homogeneous, the probability increases of observing constitutional amendment prosposals.

The dual pressures of the global economic crisis in 2008 and high crude prices through the subsequent recovery period have prompted oil-producing countries to adopt a wide range of protectionist measures including subsidies in all forms and trade and investment restrictions. Focusing on fiscal and industrial policy adjustments in the UK and the People's Republic of China since 2008, this paper argues that both governments have sought an increase in tax contributions from the corporate sector in exchange for intensified, targeted support for specific capital investments that will address the challenges of overall decline in domestic oil production and new field exploration and oil recovery opportunities. These novel “rent-sharing” schemes – inadequately captured in recent academic debates over precise measurements of fuel subsidies – raise concerns for fair competition in the upstream market and politicians’ long-term commitment to the transitioning of energy mix toward green and renewable sources.

Models of distributive politics often assume that fixed budgets constrain the efforts of incumbents to retain power. Yet, significant variation exists in politicians' abilities to push distributive costs forward by funding current fiscal policy through sovereign borrowing. This article theorizes how and when variation in sovereign credit access influences the central goal of democratic incumbents: political survival. Credit allows incumbents to reward supporters without immediately extracting domestic revenue. Excessive borrowing, however, risks higher interest rates or possible market exclusion. Considering sovereign borrowing's benefits and costs, we argue that the marginal effect of credit access on political survival is greatest for those incumbents that require other parties to implement fiscal policy. An analysis of incumbent party tenure in seventy-one democracies from 1977–2007 demonstrates that affordable sovereign finance is associated with longer tenures under divided government but has no significant effect on survival under unified governments.

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 paper focuses on how the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which will include both high-income developed and developing countries, will affect the options and investment strategies of multinational firms outside the region. Preliminary sections discuss the strategies open to both insider firms (headquartered with the Americas) and outsider firms, and the characteristics of technologies and countries that determine equilibrium location choices. Then I turn more explicitly to the question at hand, and suggest that a free-trade area of the Americas can be conceptually decomposed into (a) integration among the southern developing countries and (b) integration between the south and NAFTA. The first will give third-country multinationals horizontal investment opportunities to serve the effectively larger southern market with local production to serve the local southern market. The second gives third-country multinationals the opportunity to exploit low labor costs in the south to produce for export to North America (export-platform FDI). While this all sounds attractive for third-country firms, the theory emphasizes that the same advantages of integration are conferred upon U.S. and Canadian firms who have the additional advantage of supplying services and intermediate goods to southern affiliates at lower cost than the third country firms. This competitive effect from insider firms leads the theory to suggest weaker benefits to third-country firms than a simpler approach might predict.

Why do some countries institutionalize a social program compensating the unemployed while others do not? My main argument is that the choice to have an unemployment insurance program is a function of 1) the distribution of unemployment risks within a country and 2) political processes through which demands for insurance are realized. The distribution of industrial-specific risks and workers' employment status are the driving force in shaping workers' demands. In developing countries, these demands are more likely to be realized under democratic regimes. An event history model for 102 developing countries from 1946 to 2000 is used to test the arguments.

American discontent with offshore production features heavily in trade policy debates. But Americans more typically encounter offshore production in apolitical contexts as consumers. We argue that these ostensibly apolitical encounters with offshore production are, in fact, freighted with political consequences. This paper asks: When and for whom does consumer-based exposure to offshore production reduce support for free trade? This is an important in its own right, but also sheds light on the contexts in which more overtly political references to offshore production are likely to find the most fertile ground. We answer these questions using a survey experiment that embeds an offshoring “prime” into an advertisement for pet furniture, varying the location of production across different treatment groups. We find that our experimental exposure to offshore production depressed enthusiasm for free trade, but only when production occurred in China, and mainly among white men living near trade-related job loss. That heterogeneity resonates with work on the economic and social aspects of the decline in American manufacturing employment.

E.U. and U.S. businesses in China are actively shaping the business environment according to their interests. As a state-corporatist framework is applied, the question arises as to how Western businesses go about lobbying China's policies. This article provides insights on what kind of lobbying tools Western interest groups apply to actively influence China's party state. Drawing on a large data set of lobbying actions toward indigenous innovation policies, this article aims to demonstrate that China's political system is receptive to influence from the outside. The argument builds on evidence showing that China's state corporatist system provides some leeway for pluralist lobbying strategies. It is hypothesized that Western interest groups are not completely co-opted by China's state-corporatist system, which increases the number of membership driven lobbying strategies. As Western groups stand outside the system, they are expected to devote their lobbying efforts to the international level. Specifically, this article analyzes how constrained access in domestic China affects transnational venue shopping versus domestic strategies.

In 1998, the domestic steel industry in the United States devised and executed a complex and sophisticated effort to achieve an effective non-market response to a sudden, persistent, and damaging surge of imported steel. This campaign lasted until 2002, when President George W. Bush invoked Section 201 of the U.S. trade laws to impose tariffs on imports of most steel products. This case of the steel industry's trade policy campaign provides an opportunity to examine selected models of protection-seeking industries and lobbying to ask why and how the steel coalition achieved this extraordinary governmental response. These questions are explored though a descriptive case of the steel industry's protection-seeking campaign followed by a comparative examination of previous models of protection-seeking firms, and lobbying to achieve protectionist policies. A comparison with selected models of the determinants of protection-seeking and factors affecting lobbying strategies show that most, almost all, were present in the steel case. In fact, a meta-strategic approach that transcends the customary understanding of lobbying is suggested in a complex policy environment. Such an environment can be characterized by: the need to influence multiple governmental entities – legislative, regulatory, executive; the desire for multiple outcomes with varying levels of specificity – laws or resolutions, administrative rulings, policy choices; interactions between different levels and branches of government; employment of coordinated interrelated lobbying techniques; and simultaneity of these factors.

Firms with well-formulated competitive market strategies could still fail due to their lack of effective nonmarket strategy. Climate change poses significant threats to firms and presents firms’ need to develop nonmarket strategy integrated with market strategy. Relying on the unique dataset of US S&P 500 firms’ responses to climate change, this study seeks to ask why some firms attempt to engage in climate policy making, while others do not do so. The results found that firms with organizational resources and capabilities underlying their carbon market strategy are more likely to support mandatory climate policy. It sheds light on the significance of integrated market and nonmarket strategies, particularly when business opportunities are controlled more by governments than by markets.

Recent developments in the international banking system, especially the 2007–9 crisis and subsequent wave of postcrisis regulation, have drawn increasing attention to the structural power of banks and banking systems. States need a functioning financial system to ensure the overall health of their economies, so states must shape policy to protect their financial firms. National financial systems may be dominated either by banks or by capital markets. In states where banks dominate provision of capital, states must shape policy to protect their banks because of their structural importance, independent of any lobbying or other direct action on the part of banks to exercise instrumental power. The entangling of structural and instrumental power means studying differences in structural power requires either careful case-study work or cross-national comparison of responses to a common shock. The implementation of the 2011 Basel III Accords provides just such an opportunity. This article offers a quantitative analysis of a new dataset of implementation of Basel III components in the Basel Committee on Banking Stability member states from 2011 to 2019 and demonstrates the structural power of banks in bank-based systems to accelerate implementation of favorable policies and slow implementation of unfavorable ones.

Seeking to build on related successes in other information technology sectors, the government of India has signaled its intent to transform the country's performance in microelectronics. Facing a young and expanding population, India needs to create manufacturing jobs in promising industries, and it needs to build out from its limited high-technology base. Semiconductors are foundational in this regard. Today, there is much discussion within India about the link between semiconductors and innovation in bio-electronics, alternative energy production and storage, and various micro- and nano-devices. The government's contemporary attempt to promote the building of infrastructure for manufacturing and applied research in semiconductors highlights reasons for hope. So too does the remarkable talent now available in the Indian diaspora. But significant impediments, especially in postsecondary and graduate-level education, must still be overcome if the necessary human capital is to be developed, equipped, and deployed effectively.

Does international investor sentiment improve when a crises-ridden country participates in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program? I argue that merely participating in an IMF program may not revive the sentiments of investors. Rather, investor sentiment would improve when governments enhance the credibility of their commitment to reforms by accepting severe conditions imposed by the IMF, which incur ex ante and ex post political costs. Using panel data on 166 countries during the 1992–2013 period (twenty-two years), I find that countries participating in IMF programs, with conditions attached, specifically prior actions and performance criteria conditions, after controlling for endogeneity concerns using exogeneous instruments, are associated with an increase in long-term investor sentiment. These results are robust to using alternative data, variables and estimation methods. My findings are in stark contrast to those who argue that IMF conditional programs are akin to swallowing a bitter pill. In fact, my results demonstrate that the so-called bitter pill may act as a palliative.

This article examines the evolution of U.S. chemical firms' corporate strategies in Asia over the past decade. Prior to the Asian financial crisis, these firms treated the Asian market as an expansion outlet due to a persistent lack of growth in Western markets. Since the crisis, U.S. firms have reformulated their market and organizational strategies to better withstand disruptions of business or product life cycles, specifically through refocusing core competence and establishing regional production networks. Meanwhile, their nonmarket strategies have lagged behind market strategies in specificity and sensitivity to the Asian context. This article explores the early effort in safety and environmental self-governance of the chemical firms in Asia, and argues that the history of domestic competition and government-business relations in the home market has to a large degree determined the transnational strategies of U.S. firms. Finally, U.S. chemical firms strategies are increasingly dependent on the behavior of their Asian competitors - in particular whether Asian producers enter into alliances with U.S. firms or resist liberalization and regional market interpenetration.

Contemporary discussions in the comparative political economy of innovation revolve specifically around the question of globalization's impact on the observable diversity of innovation patterns, institutionally grounded comparative advantages of firms and countries as well as their evolution over time. The paper develops the concept of “contingent institutional adaptation” to trace institutional evolution at the firm level. It advances the idea that contingent adaptation can cause institutional hybridization, an evolutionary path defined by change and continuity, thereby offering a more nuanced concept of institutional evolution over time. In a historic single-case study the paper investigates the German Siemens AG and its efforts to remain on the cutting-edge of major information and communication technologies in two time periods (1847–1914; 1989–2013), both marked by institutional adaptations resulting in hybridization. Ultimately, institutional hybridization led to Siemens’ retreat from all information and communication technology sectors.

The globalization of production simultaneously opens up new opportunities for firms and threatens them with intensified foreign competition. Studies of the resulting producer demands for commercial policy have not yet incorporated two recent trends: the increasing significance of the trade in services and the proliferation of international corporate alliances. With two US industries (airlines and telecommunications) as illustrative case studies, it can be seen that, to a surprising extent, even competitive global industries will seek to block foreign competitors from entering local markets via alliances. The level of political conflict in response to these alliances is related to the issue of market access at home and abroad. Market barriers abroad provide global producers with the motive for seeking contingent restrictions. Restrictions at home give domestic firms the opportunity to oppose alliances without worrying that competitors could enter the market through foreign direct investment. The model suggests some important differences in the political reactions to globalization between service and manufacturing firms.

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) promise exclusive access for their members at the expense of excluded parties. But what does this exclusivity mean for firms in nonmember states if production networks are internationally organized? This paper analyzes the effect of PTA exclusion on firms embedded in the global supply chains, focusing on the case of China's exclusion from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Drawing on a survey of Chinese firm managers during the TPP negotiations, we find that productive and downstream firms anticipated the exclusion and made adjustments accordingly, which led to a general sense of optimism toward the agreement. When presented with the prospect of an expanded TPP, however, firms are divided depending on how their own positions in the global supply chain complement or compete with the new member. These findings, validated with interviews in the field, suggest that the effects of PTA exclusion depend on the ability and need for firms to adjust. As a result, exclusion does not equate to an unalloyed loss for excluded firms.