Contestants, Profiteers, and the Political Dynamics of Marketization ― How Shareholders Gained Control Rights in Britain, Germany, and France

Since the early 1980s, governments worldwide have taken a wide range of policy measures to strengthen and expand market-based competition. So far, the financial crisis that erupted in 2008 has not led to a significant policy reversal. Recent political events may well reflect widespread disenchantment with the consequences of neoliberal policies, but it remains to be seen whether the political leaders who rode to power by harnessing the discontent will deliver the market-restraining measures that many of their voters expect.

This book highlights the role of "profiteers" in political efforts to expand market-based competition. Political struggles surrounding the gradual marketization of corporate control in Britain, Germany and France from the 1860s provide empirical illustration. The book maps and analyzes the path-dependent evolution of support for shareholder rights relating to takeover bids among key interest groups, including managers, creditors, shareholders, and takeover service providers, as well as among political parties. By comparing the self-reinforcing and self-undermining policy feedback of market-enabling and market-restraining rules, it helps explain why market containment is an uphill struggle, while market expansion becomes easier with time.

Helen Callaghan is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. She obtained her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2006 and enjoyed a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute before joining the MPIfG in 2008. Her research focuses on the politics of corporate governance in advanced industrialized economies. She has published peer reviewed articles in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Review of International Political Economy, Socio-Economic Review, West European Politics, and Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.