Political Determinants of Corporate Governance:Political Context, Coporate Impact

Develops the argument that it is politics which determines corporate governance.Uses both statistical and qualitative analyses.Multiple disciplinary focuses including law, comparative politics, financial economics, and industrial organization.Comparative approach including data from the US, the UK, Germany, France, and Japan.Before a nation can produce, it must achieve social peace. That social peace has been reached in different nations by differing means, some of which have then been embedded in business firms, in corporate ownership patterns, and in corporate governance structures.The large publicly held, diffusely owned firm dominates business in the United States despite its infirmities, namely the frequently fragile relations between stockholders and managers. But in other economically advanced nations, ownership is not diffuse but concentrated. It is concentrated in no small measure because the delicate threads that tie managers to shareholders in the public firm fray easily in common political environments, such as those in the continental European social democracies.