Does democracy control business, or does business control democracy? This study of how companies are bought and sold in four countries - France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands - explores this fundamental question. It does so by examining variation in the rules of corporate control - specifically, whether hostile takeovers are allowed. Takeovers have high political stakes: they result in corporate reorganizations, layoffs and the unraveling of compromises between workers and managers. B...

Designed specifically for introductory globalization courses, Introducing Globalization helps students to develop informed opinions about globalization, inviting them to become participants rather than just passive learners.Identifies and explores the major economic, political and social ties that comprise contemporary global interdependencyExamines a broad sweep of topics, from the rise of transnational corporations and global commodity chains, to global h...

Regulation by public and private organizations can be hijacked by special interests or small groups of powerful firms, and nowhere is this easier than at the global level. In whose interest is the global economy being regulated? Under what conditions can global regulation be made to serve broader interests? This is the first book to examine systematically how and why such hijacking or "regulatory capture" happens, and how it can be averted.Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods bring toget...

Winner of the Porter Prize, this classic study thoroughly profiles the corporate elite of late twentieth-century Canada, within a global context. It traces the fundamental changes in the structure of corporate power in Canada since the mid-1970s and highlights such key issues as the place of Canadian corporate power in global context, the westward shift of Canadian corporate power, and the emergence of a North American corporate elite. The book opens with a survey of corporate power and disc...

Outsourcing Economics has a double meaning. First, it is a book about the economics of outsourcing. Second, it examines the way that economists have understood globalization as a pure market phenomenon, and as a result have 'outsourced' the explanation of world economic forces to other disciplines. Markets are embedded in a set of institutions - labor, government, corporate, civil society, and household - that mold the power asymmetries that influence the distribution of the gains from glo...

This analysis of how multi-level networked governance has superseded the liberal system of interdependent states focuses on the role of law in mediating power and shows how lawyers have shaped the main features of capitalism, especially the transnational corporation. It covers the main institutions regulating the world economy, including the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and a myriad of other bodies, and introduces the reader to key regulatory arenas: corporate governance, competition polic...

Continuing its tradition of current, exemplary scholarship, the 2012-13 edition of How Ottawa Spends casts a critical eye at national politics, priorities, and policies, with an emphasis on the Conservative majority's mandated austerity measures and budget-cutting strategies.Leading scholars from across Canada examine a new era of majority government and a transformed political opposition both in Parliament and in provincial politics. Several closely linked political, poli...

International institutions, from the International Monetary Fund to the International Olympic Committee, are perceived as bastions of sclerotic mediocrity at best and outright corruption at worst, and this perception is generally not far off the mark. In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, Daniel W. Drezner, like so many others, looked at the smoking ruins of the global economy and wondered why global economic governance structure had failed so spectacularly, and what could be done to re...

Two leading economists discuss a range of issues relating to the “offshoring” of American jobs, from free trade to unemployment levels.It is no surprise that many fearful American workers see the call center operator in Bangalore or the factory worker in Guangzhou as a threat to their jobs. The emergence of China and India (along with other, smaller developing countries) as economic powers has doubled the supply of labor to the integrated world economy. Economic th...

The 2013-14 edition of How Ottawa Spends critically examines national politics, priorities, and policies with a close lens on Stephen Harper's Conservative party during the middle of their first term as a majority.Contributors from across Canada examine the federal government and its not uncommon mid-term problems but also its considerable agenda of long term plans, both set in the midst of national economic fragility and a global fiscal and debt crisis. Individual chapter...

Adopted in 2001, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) represents a new vision to place African countries on a path toward poverty reduction, sustainable growth, and full integration in the world economy. This conference volume includes papers selected from a high-level seminar in December 2002 held in Dakar, Senegal, organized by the IMF Institute in the context of the program of the Joint Africa Institute (JAI). The papers focus on the challenges confronting NEPAD in reducing...

Confronted with the major crisis that struck the world economy at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, analysts, researchers, and political leaders studied past experiences to avoid repeating errors of diagnosis, recommendation, or action. The disastrous experience of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, which caused social misery, massive unemployment, protectionism, forms of nationalism, and led to a world war whose devastating effects were pushed to an extreme, remain...