The national association of French employers and industry, MEDEF, seems to be an example of strong and unified interest organization, especially since its reform in 1998. Through a study of the collective action of firms in France, this article sheds doubt on such an impression. In fact, a...

The rise in inequality has been explained with reference to organized groups and the lobbying of the financial sector. This article argues that the image of politics as organized combat is contradicted by empirical evidence on lobbying in the United States, and does not travel well to Europe....

Bank bailouts in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the Great Recession brought into sharp relief the power that the global financial sector holds over national politics, and provoked widespread public outrage. In The Power of Inaction, Cornelia Woll details the...

Lobbying by economic actors constitutes a central element of a large part of the literature on trade policy-making. However, it is mainly considered as inputʺ into the political system, which then aggregates the demand of different societal interests. As such inputs, the preferences of economic...

What role do firms play in the making of EU trade policy? This article surveys the policy domain and lays out the instruments firms can employ to influence decisions on trade. It underlines that European trade policy is characterized by a high degree of institutional complexity, which firms have...

The Power of Inaction -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- 1. Bailout Games -- 2. Crisis Management across the World -- 3. The Power of Collective Inaction -- 4. From Theory to Practice -- 5. The United States and the United Kingdom -- 6. France and Germany -- 7....