Analysing the Politics of State Business Relations - a methodological concept note on the historical institutionalist approach

Abstract

The cluster on State Business Relations (SBRs) is one of the key components of the IPPG consortium research programme. It seeks to deepen the understanding of the provenance, evolution and forms of both formal and informal institutional interactions between states and businesses; to identify the factors which affect the relations between states and businesses and which shape the institutions (both formal and informal) which govern them; and to measure the effects of different configurations of SBRs on economic growth. SBRs may be said to be of interest to institutional theory to the extent that the pattern/s of these relationships are governed by either or both formal and informal rules, that is regular or institutionalised practices which govern how states and businesses interact; or - to be more precise - how the relations, dealings and interactions of organisations representing business, on the one hand, and the state (or its specific departments, or agencies), on the other hand, are structured by institutional arrangements. It is the nature of these arrangements that is of institutional interest. This concept paper concerns the politics of State Business Relations (SBRs), and it sets out some of the key conceptual issues in the historical institutionalist (HI) tradition, offering some ideas about how researchers might be able to deploy the relevant concepts and methods as they take their work forward