European University Institute Library

Unity or fracture?, explaining political preference formation among large American, British, and German firms, Niels Selling

eng

This is a thesis on political preference formation, which refers to the ways in which actors learn to prefer one political option over another. In political science, these actors are usually private citizens, in their role as voters, and it is easy to see that voting behavior will continue to dominate the research on political preferences. After the referendum that saw a majority of Britons in favor of leaving the EU and the American election of 2016, which brought Donald J. Trump to the White House, people now call for political scientists to spend the next few years trying to figure out how this could have possibly happened.1 It is a safe bet that political science journals will be filled to the brim with articles on the topic and that many, many hours in university classrooms will be devoted to discussions of Trumpism, authoritarianism, anti-immigrant sentiments, white backlash, et cetera. As important as this is, the road that this study travels takes a different turn. It heads away from elections and referendums - "electoral spectacles", as Hacker and Pierson (2011, p. 86) call them - and instead takes aim at preference formation among large firms, the type of actor that, according to the same authors, truly shapes politics in the long run. Brexit and Trump’s triumph are described as big defeats for big business. During the campaigns, the American business community was depicted as overwhelmingly anti-Trump, the British as a staunch “Remainiac”. Although these sentiments undoubtedly percolated through vast swaths, the story is more multifaceted. While it is true that, for example, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos proposed that Donald Trump should be sent to space and Elon Musk said that Trump "is probably not the right guy" for president, other corporate leaders seemingly warmed to Trump, such as Bruce Van Saun, CEO of Citizens Financial Group, and Andrew N. Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, to mention but two.2 In the United Kingdom, three hundred business leaders signed an open letter urging Britain to leave the EU3 and in a poll, only 43 percent of FTSE 350 firms viewed Brexit as "potentially damaging."4 This is not to say that American and British firms were perfectly divided on these issues, only that it is difficult to find examples of business consensus, even in the instances when we are most likely to do so

Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-185)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--European University Institute (SPS), 2018

no index present

non fiction

Unity or fracture?

theses

1044719099

Defence date: 28 May 2018

Niels Selling

EUI PhD thesesEUI theses

explaining political preference formation among large American, British, and German firms