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Corporations and the American Welfare State: Adversaries or Allies?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2019

Mark S. Mizruchi
Mark S. Mizruchi*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
*
Email: mizruchi@umich.edu
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Extract

One of the most widely held views about American political life is that business is hostile to the welfare state. In the 1970s, David Vogel asked why American businessmen “distrusted their state.” Kim Phillips-Fein has written of the “businessmen's crusade against the New Deal.” Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean have recounted the efforts of the Koch Brothers and their wealthy allies to remake American politics in a more conservative direction. What could be more uncontroversial than the view that American business is broadly opposed to government social policies?

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 17 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

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18. Quoted in Jacoby, Sanford M., “Employers and the Welfare State: The Role of Marion B. Folsom,” Journal of American History 80, no. 2 (1993): 545CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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20. Mizruchi, Fracturing, 66–67.

21. Ibid., 242.

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25. Milt Freudenheim, “Calling for a Bigger U.S. Health Role,” New York Times, May 30, 1989.

26. Mizruchi, Fracturing, 243–52.

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28. Mizruchi, Fracturing, 259.

29. See https://www.thebalance.com/causes-of-rising-healthcare-costs-4064878.

30. See https://www.rand.org/topics/health-care-cost-inflation.html.

31. Mizruchi, Fracturing, 260–64.

32. Johan Chu and Jerry Davis, “Corporate America's Old Boys Club is Dead—and That's Why Big Business Couldn't Stop Trump,” The Conversation, October 20, 2016, https://theconversation.com/corporate-americas-old-boys-club-is-dead-and-thats-why-big-business-couldnt-stop-trump-67035. There have been numerous accounts in the popular press in recent years of how big business “lost Washington” or lost control of the Republican Party. For a particularly detailed account of political difficulties that large corporations have experienced, albeit prior to the Trump presidency, see Tory Newmyer, “The Inside Story about how Big Business Lost Washington, Fortune, February 20, 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/02/20/the-inside-story-of-how-big-business-lost-washington/.”

33. Mizruchi, Fracturing, 261.

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35. Ibid., 85.