Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Businesses in the Middle East and North Africa have failed to bring sustainable development despite decades of investment from the private and public sectors. Yet we still know little about why the Arab Uprisings failed to usher in more transparent government that could break this enduring cycle of corruption and mismanagement. Examining posttransition politics in Egypt and Tunisia, Kubinec employs interviews and quantitative surveys to map out the corrupting influence of businesses on politics. He argues that businesses must respond to changes in how perks and privileges are distributed after political transitions, either by forming political coalitions or creating new informal connections to emerging politicians. Employing detailed case studies and original experiments, Making Democracy Safe for Business advances our empirical understanding of the study of the durability of corruption in general and the dismal results of the Arab Uprisings in particular.

Democratization --- Capitalism --- Political corruption --- Business and politics --- Businessmen --- Political aspects --- Political activity --- Egypt --- Tunisia --- Economic policy. --- Businessmen Political activity --- Capitalism Political aspects --- Egypt Economic policy. --- Tunisia Economic policy. --- Business men --- Businesspeople --- Business --- Politics and business --- Politics, Practical --- Political business cycles --- Boss rule --- Corruption (in politics) --- Graft in politics --- Malversation --- Political scandals --- Corruption --- Misconduct in office --- Market economy --- Economics --- Profit --- Capital --- Democratic consolidation --- Democratic transition --- Political science --- New democracies --- Corrupt practices --- Chunijia --- Chunijia Kyōwakoku --- Jumhuriya at-Tunisiya --- Jumhūrīyah al-Tūnisīyah --- Republic of Tunisia --- République tunisienne --- Tunesien --- Túnez --- Tunis (Protectorate) --- Tunisie --- Tunisskai︠a︡ Respublika --- Tunisyah --- チュニジア --- チュニジア共和国

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper considers the political influence of private firms. While such influence is frequently discussed, there is limited analysis of how firms combine political interactions, and under what conditions, to gain influence. The exception is the large literature on firms with political connections, with findings generally showing large gains to firms with those direct relationships. This paper extends the discussion of influence beyond political connections alone and uses a rich firm-level data set from 41 economies, which includes information on several interactions with political actors. Using a Bayesian item response theory (IRT) measurement model, an index of Political Influence is estimated, with the prior assumption that political connections yield more influence. Membership in a business association is found to enhance influence, while such influence is offset by bribes, state ownership, firm size, and a reliance on collective lobbying. Political Influence is found to be broadly higher in economies with poorer governance but more dispersed in those with better governance. Within economies, higher influence is associated with a higher likelihood of reporting a small number of competitors, higher sales, and lower labor inputs relative to sales. These findings are robust across several models that incorporate high-dimensional fixed effects, incorporating measurement error in the index, and varying these relationships over several governance measures.

Sustainable development.