Book Launch: Advanced Introduction to Business and Government by David Coen and Matia Vannoni, EE Publishing

The relationship between business and politics is central to our understanding of the economy and society. However, the political impact of business varies across governance levels, countries, institutions, issues, and size and organization of the firm, and requires many disciplines to make sense of this complexity. Advanced Introduction to Business and Politics (by David Coen and Matia Vannoni, published by EE Publishing) draws on key concepts and insights from different disciplines, including economics, political economy, management and political science. In so doing, this book talks to those who study how business designs and implements effective lobbying strategies and those who look at how the government designs and implements public policy with the collaboration of business.
In this panel, we will discuss the main insights from this book and propose promising avenues of future research for scholars in the field. We gather contributions that from a theoretical and disciplinary standpoint scrutinize the role of business in the provision of public goods and services, especially at the international level. In this regard, disciplines such as international public policy/political economy (IPP/IPE) and international business stand poised to offer significant contributions. Notably, the emerging trend of large corporations assuming more proactive roles in political and social spheres, exemplified by corporate social responsibility initiatives, underscores the evolving landscape of contemporary business-government relations. This is even more evident at the international level, and in the Global South, with more and more contemporary challenges requiring cross-border cooperation between the public and private sector at different levels of governance.
Moreover, we gather contributions that focus on a micro-level analysis of business and government dynamics. Transitioning from a structural to an agent-based perspective holds promise not only for elucidating novel dynamics but also for facilitating the development of more inferential and rigorous analytical frameworks. This shift unveils nuances previously obscured by macro-level analyses, thus enriching our understanding of the intricate interplay between business and government actors. In this strand, we gather contributions that look at the interaction between business and bureaucrats, as well as business and legislators at the individual level.