Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2024
We thank Walter Friedman, Geoffrey Jones, and David Shorten for their generous support of this special issue and for the opportunity to serve as guest editors. We are also grateful to Harvard Business School for hosting a conference on “International Governance, Business, and the State” in 2021 and a roundtable discussion on “Capitalism and Global Governance” in 2022 and to the participants of those events for their input. Finally, we thank all the contributors and reviewers who made this issue possible. We are also grateful to the students from our courses, respectively, “History of Global Capitalism and Global Governance” and “Etat et société” for three academic terms of rich discussions on these themes.
1 In the first issue of the Global Governance journal published in 1995, Lawrence Finkelstein explained that the concept of governance allows us “to penetrate and understand the government-like events that occur in the world of states even in the absence of government.” Governance is particularly helpful in grasping the functioning of international systems, which, he argued, “notoriously lack hierarchy and government.” While the concept of global governance has been criticized for its fuzziness and its ambiguity, such characteristics are also precisely at the core of what makes governance so useful, allowing to include a variety of power relations and actors in the narrative, including non-state actors such as businesspeople. See: Lawrence S. Finkelstein, “What Is Global Governance?,” Global Governance 1, no. 1 (1995): 367-368.
2 For a discussion of the latest wave of deglobalization, see: Geoffrey Jones and Valeria Giacomin, “Deglobalization and Alternative Futures,” Harvard Business School Technical Note 322-088, Jan. 2022 (Revised March 2022). For perspectives on nationalism in the past and present, see: Cemil Aydin, Grace Ballor, Sebastian Conrad, Frederick Cooper, Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, Richard Drayton, Michael Goebel, Pieter M. Judson, Sandrine Kott, Nicola Miller, Aviel Roshwald, Glenda Sluga, and Lydia Walker, “Rethinking Nationalism,” The American Historical Review 127, no. 1, (2022): 311–371.
3 On capitalist international organizations, see the extensive work of Thomas David and Pierre Eichenberger on the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), including: “‘A World Parliament of Business’? The International Chamber of Commerce and Its Presidents in the Twentieth Century,” Business History 65, no. 2 (2023): 260-283. See also the work of Matthias Schmelzer, who has historicized the capitalist dynamics of the OECD in The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm (Cambridge, UK, 2016). For an interpretation of European cooperation through the lens of capitalism, see: Aurelie Andry, Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Quentin Jouan, “Rethinking European Integration in Light of Capitalism: The Case of the Long 1970s,” European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire 26, no. 4 (2019): 553–572. On the development of global economic governance, see, for example: Jamie Martin, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance (Cambridge, MA, 2022). In their recent HBS Case, Geoffrey Jones and Mona Rahmani offered a wide-ranging critique of global governance: “In Search of Global Regulation,” Harvard Business School Case No. 9-822-122 (2022).
4 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation Matérielle, Économie, et Capitalisme, Tome 2 (New York, 1982), 443; Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation (New York, 1944).
5 Global historians have engaged in a lively debate about the merits of thinking globally. See: Richard Drayton and David Motadel, “Discussion: The Futures of Global History,” Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (2018): 1-21.
6 Walter Friedman, “Recent Trends in Business History Research: Capitalism, Democracy, and Innovation,” Enterprise & Society 18, no. 4 (2017): 753.
7 Recent scholarship has traced the widespread origins of capitalism from thirteenth-century Italy and early modern Asia to the transition from feudalism to industry in Britain, the transatlantic slave trade to FoxConn and Silicon Valley. See: Francesca Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Makings of European Commercial Society (Princeton, 2019); Sophus Reinert and Robert Fredona, “Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism,” in The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business, ed. Teresa da Silva Lopes, Christina Lubinski, and Heidi Tworek (London, 2018); Giorgio Riello, ERC Project CAPASIA: The Asian Origins of Global Capitalism: The European Factories of the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800; Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge, MA, 2018); Margaret Pearson, Meg Rithmire, and Kellee Tsai, “Party-State Capitalism in China,” Current History 120, no 827 (2021): 207-213.
8 Wolfgang Streeck, “How to Study Contemporary Capitalism?,” European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie 53, no. 1 (2012): 3. Sven Beckert and Christine Desan founded a center for this field of study at Harvard University and have published key texts in this burgeoning field, including, American Capitalism: New Histories (New York, 2019). For a critical survey of the history of capitalism approach, see: Eric Hilt, “Economic History, Historical Analysis, and the ‘New History of Capitalism,” The Journal of Economic History 77, no. 2 (2017): 511-536.
9 Friedman, “Recent Trends in Business History Research,” 753.
10 Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, eds. Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History (Cambridge, UK, 2017). Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York, 2012).
11 Glenda Sluga, “Business Transnationalism, Looking from the Outside In,” Business History 65, no. 2 (17 Feb. 2023): 382–388; Sandrine Kott, Organiser le monde: Une autre histoire de la guerre froide (Paris, 2021); Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer, eds., Societal Actors in European Integration: Polity-Building and Policy-Making 1958-1992 (Basingstoke, 2013).
12 Neil Rollings, ‘“The Vast and Unsolved Enigma of Power:’ Business History and Business Power,” Enterprise & Society 22, no. 4 (2021): 893–920; Philippe Lefebvre, “Penser l’entreprise comme acteur politique,” Entreprises et histoire 104, no. 3 (2021): 5–18; Alexia Blin, “L’entreprise, un objet d’histoire politique ? Propositions et questionnements à partir du cas des États-Unis,” Histoire Politique. Revue du Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po, no. 39 (2019); Marieke Louis and Yohann Morival, “Au-delà de l’unité. Penser les conflits dans l’étude des acteurs économiques privés transnationaux,” Critique internationale 97, no. 4 (2022): 9–22; Pierre Eichenberger, Neil Rollings, and Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, “The Brokers of Globalization: Towards a History of Business Associations in the International Arena,” Business History 65, no. 2 (2023): 217–234.
13 Niall G. MacKenzie, Andrew Perchard, Christopher Miller, and Neil Forbes, “Business-Government Relations and National Economic Models: A Review and Future Research Directions in Varieties of Capitalism and Beyond,” Business History 63, no. 8 (2021): 1239–1252; Neil Rollings, British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945-1973 (New York, 2008); Grace Ballor, “Agents of Integration: Multinational Firms and the European Union,” Enterprise & Society 21, no. 4 (2020): 886-892.
14 For a survey, see Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey, Ruomei Yang, and Frank Mueller, “Elite Philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom in the New Age of Inequalities,” International Journal of Management Reviews 23, no. 3 (2021): 330–352; Eleanor Shaw, Jillian Gordon, Charles Harvey, and Mairi Maclean, “Exploring Contemporary Entrepreneurial Philanthropy,” International Small Business Journal 31, no. 5 (2013): 580–599. On transnational business interest organizations, see: Neil Rollings and Matthias Kipping, “Private Transnational Governance in the Heyday of the Nation-State: The Council of European Industrial Federations (CEIF),” The Economic History Review 61, no. 2 (2008): 409–431; Neil Rollings, “The Development of Transnational Business Associations during the Twentieth Century,” Business History (2021): 1–25; Thomas David and Pierre Eichenberger, “‘A World Parliament of Business’? The International Chamber of Commerce and Its Presidents in the Twentieth Century,” Business History (2022): 1–24. On private governance, see: Marco Bertilorenzi, “The International Aluminum Industry during the 1930s: Between International Cartel Governance and National Strategic Policies,” Entreprises et histoire 76, no. 3 (2014): 20–40; Martin Shanahan and Susanna Fellman, eds., A History of Business Cartels: International Politics, National Policies and Anti-Competitive Behaviour (New York, 2022).
15 Alfred D. Chandler and Bruce Mazlish, eds., Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
16 Mary O’Sullivan, “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Capitalism,” Enterprise & Society 19, no. 4 (2018): 751–802; Jonathan Levy, “Capital as Process and the History of Capitalism,” Business History Review 91, no. 3 (2017): 483–510.
17 Marc Flandreau, “‘Border Crossing,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 1, no. 1 (2019): 1–9.
18 Brad DeLong’s latest book historicizes the tandem evolutions of innovation and globalization, both driven by corporations. See: J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (New York, 2022).
19 Heidi Tworek, “Magic Connections: German News Agencies and Global News Networks, 1905–1945,” Enterprise & Society 15, no. 4 (2014): 673–674; Heidi Tworek, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945 (Cambridge, MA, 2019).
20 Andry, Mourlon-Druol, Ikonomou, and Jouan, “Rethinking European Integration,” 557.
21 Kiran Klaus Patel historicized these organizations in his: Project Europe: A History (Cambridge, UK, 2020). Quinn Slobodian has drawn attention to the tensions between those who supported global market integration and the architects of regional European economic cooperation. See Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA, 2018), Chapter 6. It is important to note that European cooperation deepened and took on new political and social dimensions over time. Its most prominent organizations (like the European Union) remained distinctly regional, differentiating “transnational” governance from “global” governance, even if the world often adopts European norms. For more on this, see Anu Bradford, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World (Oxford, 2020).
22 On the varieties of impacts, see for instance: Jonathan Zeitlin, ed., Extending Experimentalist Governance? The European Union and Transnational Regulation (Oxford, 2017).
23 Geoffrey Jones and Peter Miskell, “European Integration and Corporate Restructuring: The Strategy of Unilever 1957-1990,” The Economic History Review 58, no. 1 (2005): 113-139.
24 On early discussion for European integration, see: Paul Turberg, “Cooperation with employers’ organizations: Business relations behind the scenes of the Elysée Treaty (1961-1964),” Relations internationales 147, no. 3 (2020): 91-104.
25 Grace Ballor, “Liberalisation or protectionism for the single market? European automakers and Japanese competition, 1985–1999,” Business History 65, no. 2 (2023): 302–328; Samuel Klebaner and Sigfrido Ramirez Pérez, “Managing Technical Changes from the Scales of Legal Regulation: German Clean Cars against the European Pollutant Emissions Regulations in the 1980s,” Management & Organizational History 14, (2019): 1–27; Samuel Klebaner, Normes environnementales européennes et stratégies des constructeurs automobiles : Un jeu coopératif aux résultats ambigus (Paris, 2020); Alice Milor, “Whose Business Is Road Safety?: From a Fragmented to an Integrated Approach in France and Europe (1972–1998),” Transfers 9, no. 3 (2019): 41–60.
26 Grace Ballor, “Liberal Environmentalism: The Public-Private Production of European Emissions Standards,” Business History Review, 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 575–601.
27 Laurent Warlouzet, Governing Europe in a Globalizing World: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives Following the 1973 Oil Crisis (London, 2018); Laurent Warlouzet, “The European Commission Facing Crisis: Social, Neo-Mercantilist and Market-Oriented Approaches, 1967-1985,” European Review of History 26, no.4 (2019): 703–722. For competing visions and conflicts on European integration, see also: Michel Dumoulin, René Giraud, and Gilbert Trausch, eds., L’Europe du patronat: de la guerre froide aux années soixante (Berne, 1993); Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, “The Transatlantic Business Community Faced with US Direct Investment in Western Europe, 1958–1968,” Business History 58, no. 6 (2016): 880–902; Benjamin Bürbaumer, “TNC Competitiveness in the Formation of the Single Market: The Role of European Business Revisited,” New Political Economy 26, no.4 (2020): 1–15; Sigfrido M. Ramírez Pérez, “Crises and Transformations of European Integration: European Business Circles during the Long 1970s,” European Review of History 26, no. 4 (2019): 618–635; Aurélie Dianara Andry, Social Europe, the Road Not Taken: The Left and European Integration in the Long 1970s (Oxford, 2022).
28 Ballor, “Agents of Integration”; Alexis Drach, “An Early Form of European Champions? Banking Clubs between European Integration and Global Banking (1960s–1990s),” Business History (2022): 1–24. See also Christos Tsakas, Post-War Greco-German Relations, 1953–1981: Economic Development, Business Interests and European Integration (Cham, 2022).
29 On international standardization, see JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy, “Introduction: Standards and the Global Economy,” Business History Review 96, no. 1 (2022): 3–15. On intellectual property rights see: Susan K. Sell, Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights (Cambridge, UK, 2003); Bernardita Escobar-Andrae, “North-South Agreements on Trade and Intellectual Property beyond TRIPS: An Analysis of US Bilateral Agreements in Comparative Perspective,” JIPR 16, no. 6 (2011): 477-499.
30 Jamieson Myles has written on trade financing in Steering the Wheels of Commerce: State and Enterprise in International Trade Finance, 1914-1929 (Geneva, 2021). On the global governance of international investment, see Nicolás Perrone, Investment Treaties and the Legal Imagination: How Foreign Investors Play by Their Own Rules (Oxford, 2021); Kathryn Greenman, State Responsibility and Rebels: The History and Legacy of Protecting Investment Against Revolution (Cambridge, UK, 2021); Andrea Leiter, Making the World Safe for Investment: The Protection of Foreign Property 1922–1959 (Cambridge, 2023); Filip Batselé, “Foreign Investors of the World, Unite! The International Association for the Promotion and Protection of Private Foreign Investments (APPI) 1958–1968.” European Journal of International Law 34, no. 2 (2023): 415–447. On arbitration, see Guillaume Beausire, “La neutralité comme capital. Les ressorts symboliques de la compétitivité suisse sur le marché de l’arbitrage privé international (1970-1980),” Critique internationale 97, no. 4 (2022): 23–44. And on double taxation, see: Christophe Farquet, “Tax Avoidance, Collective Resistance, and International Negotiations: Foreign Tax Refusal by Swiss Banks and Industries Between the Two World Wars,” Journal of Policy History 25, no. 3 (July 2013): 334–353; Sabine Pitteloud, Les multinationales suisses dans l’arène politique (1942-1993) (Geneva, 2022), 213-246; Gisela Hürlimann, “Switzerland as a Laboratory for Fiscal Federalism and Global Fiscal Governance,” Economic Sociology: European Electronic Newsletter 21, no. 2 (2020): 15–25.
31 On the creation and use of tax havens, see Sébastien Guex, “The Origins of the Swiss Banking Secrecy Law and Its Repercussions for Swiss Federal Policy,” Business History Review 74, no. 2 (2000): 237–266; Sébastien Guex, “The Emergence of the Swiss Tax Haven, 1816–1914,” Business History Review 96, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 353–372; Vanessa Ogle, “Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s–1970s,” The American Historical Review 122, no. 5 (2017): 1431–1458; Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens (Chicago, 2015); Gisela Huerlimann, W. Elliot Brownlee, and Eisaku Ide, Worlds of Taxation: The Political Economy of Taxing, Spending, and Redistribution Since 1945 (Cham, 2018); Sébastien Guex and Hadrien Buclin, eds., Tax Evasion and Tax Havens since the Nineteenth Century (Cham, 2023). On tax avoidance, see: Christophe Farquet, “Tax Avoidance, Collective Resistance, and International Negotiations: Foreign Tax Refusal by Swiss Banks and Industries between the World Wars,” Journal of Policy History 25, no. 3 (2013): 334-353.
32 Sarah Stockwell, The Business of Decolonization: British Business Strategies in the Gold Coast (Oxford, 2000); Véronique Dimier, The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire (London, 2014); Véronique Dimier and Sarah Stockwell, The Business of Development in Post-Colonial Africa (London, 2021).
33 Véronique Dimier and Sarah Stockwell, “Development, Inc.? The EEC, Britain, Post-Colonial Overseas Development Aid, and Business,” Business History Review 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 513–546.
34 Kevin W. Lu, Gero Verheyen, and Srilal Mohan Perera, Investing with Confidence: Understanding Political Risk Management in the 21st Century (Washington, 2009); Sabine Pitteloud, “Multinationals’ Need for State Protection: The Creation of the Swiss Investment Risk Guarantee in the 1960s,” in Security and Insecurity in Business History: Case Studies in the Perception and Negotiation of Threats, ed. Mark Jakob, Nina Kleinöder, and Christian Kleinschmidt, (Baden-Baden, 2021), 111–134.
35 Nicolás Perrone, “Governing Global Capitalism: A Lawyer’s Perspective,” Business History Review 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 614–620.
36 For recent efforts to study global governance in relation to decolonization, see: Eva-Maria Muschik, “Special Issue Introduction: Towards a Global History of International Organizations and Decolonization,” Journal of Global History 17, no. 2 (July 2022): 173–190.
37 Geoffrey Jones, Entrepreneurship and Multinationals: Global Business and the Making of the Modern World (Cheltenham, 2013), 6-7.
38 On MNCs and political risk, see Ben Wubs, Neil Forbes, and Takafumi Kurosawa, Multinational Enterprise, Political Risk and Organisational Change: From Total War to Cold War (London, 2018); Jakob, Kleinöder, and Kleinschmidt, eds., Security and Insecurity in Business History; Mark Casson and Teresa da Silva Lopes, “Foreign Direct Investment in High-Risk Environments: An Historical Perspective,” Business History 55, no. 3 (2013): 375–404. For work on the resilience of MNCs during times of conflict and nationalism, see: Christina Lubinski, Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise: A Century of Indo-German Business Relations (Cambridge, 2022); Pierre-Yves Donzé, “The Advantage of Being Swiss: Nestlé and Political Risk in Asia during the Early Cold War, 1945–1970,” Business History Review 94, no. 2 (2020): 373–397; Christina Lubinski, Valeria Giacomin, and Klara Schnitzer, “Internment as a Business Challenge: Political Risk Management and German Multinationals in Colonial India (1914–1947),” Business History 63, no. 1 (2021): 1–26; Geoffrey Jones and Rachael Comunale, “Business, Governments and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America since 1970,” Australian Economic History Review 58, no. 3 (2018): 233–264; Christina Lubinski and R. Daniel Wadhwani, “Geopolitical Jockeying: Economic Nationalism and Multinational Strategy in Historical Perspective,” Strategic Management Journal 41, no. 3 (2020): 400–421.
39 Céline Pessis, Une autre histoire des ‘Trente Glorieuses’: modernisation, contestations et pollutions dans la France de l’après-guerre (Paris, 2016); Iris Borowy and Matthias Schmelzer, eds., History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth (London, 2017).
40 On cartels, see Harm G. Schröter, “Cartels Revisited,” Revue économique 64, no. 6 (2013): 989–1010; Shanahan and Fellman, A History of Business Cartels. For more on the politics of cartel capitalism, see the recent PhD dissertation of Liane Hewitt, “Monopoly Menace: The Rise and Fall of Cartel Capitalism in Western Europe, 1918-1957” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2023); Sigfrido M. Ramírez Pérez, “Embedding the Market during Times of Crisis: The European Automobile Cartel during a Decade of Crisis (1973–1985),” Business History 62, no. 5 (2020): 815–836.
41 Neil Rollings and Laurent Warlouzet, “Business History and European Integration: How EEC Competition Policy Affected Companies’ Strategies,” Business History 62, no. 5 (2020): 717–742.
42 See Laura Phillips Sawyer, “Jurisdiction Beyond Our Borders: The Long Road to U.S. v. Alcoa and the Extraterritorial Reach of American Antitrust, 1909-1945,” in Antimonopoly and American Democracy, ed. Daniel A. Crane and William J. Novak (Cambridge, MA: forthcoming). For her previous work on antitrust regulation, see Laura Phillips Sawyer, American Fair Trade: Proprietary Capitalism, Corporatism, and the “New Competition,” 1890–1940 (Cambridge, 2018).
43 For labor demands in Western countries, see Francesco Petrini, “Demanding Democracy in the Workplace: the European Trade Union Confederation and the Struggle to Regulate Multinationals,” in Societal Actors in European Integration: Polity-Building and Policy-Making 1958-1992, ed. Kaiser Wolfram and Meyer Jan-Henrik (Basingstoke 2013), 151-172; Rebecca Gumbrell-Mccormick, “Facing New Challenges: the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (1972-1990s),” in The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, ed. Anthony Carew and Marcel van der Linden (Bern, 2000): 341-518; Melanie Sheehan, “Opportunities Foregone: US Industrial Unions and the Politics of International Economic Policy, 1949-1983” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 2022).
44 Vanessa Ogle, “State Rights against Private Capital: The ‘New International Economic Order’ and the Struggle over Aid, Trade, and Foreign Investment, 1962–1981,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 5, no. 2 (2014): 211–234; Kott, Organiser le monde, 145-178.
45 Sabine Pitteloud, “Unwanted Attention: Swiss Multinationals and the Creation of International Corporate Guidelines in the 1970s,” Business & Politics 22, no. 4 (Dec. 2020): 587–611. For the failed binding regulation attempts at the EEC, see: Warlouzet, Governing Europe, 57-77. On the Sullivan principles, see Jessica Ann Levy, “Black Power in the Boardroom: Corporate America, the Sullivan Principles, and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle,” Enterprise & Society 21, no. 1 (2020): 170–209.
46 Ogle, “Archipelago Capitalism;” Guex and Buclin, eds., Tax Evasion and Tax Havens.
47 Farquet, “Tax Avoidance”; Farquet, “Lutte contre l’évasion fiscale: l’échec de la SDN durant l’entre-deux-guerres,” L’Économie politique, no. 44 (2009): 93–112. Similar resistance has been observed for international banking supervision, see Alexis Drach, Liberté surveillée: Supervision bancaire et globalisation financière au Comité de Bâle, 1974-1988 (Rennes, 2022); Eiji Hotor, Mikael Wendschlag, and Thibaud Giddey, Formalization of Banking Supervision. 19th-20th Centuries, (Singapore, 2022).
48 Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations.
49 Matthieu Leimgruber, “‘Kansas City on Lake Geneva’: Business Hubs, Tax Evasion, and International Connections around 1960,” Zeitschrift Für Unternehmensgeschichte 60, no. 2 (2015): 123–140.
50 Vanessa Ogle, “Governing Global Tax Dodgers: The ‘Group of Four’ and the Taxation of Multinational Corporations, 1970s-1980s,” Business History Review 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 547–574.
51 Ann-Kristin Bergquist, “Renewing Business History in the Era of the Anthropocene,” Business History Review 93, no. 1 (2019): 3–24; Geoffrey Jones, Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship (Oxford, 2019); Hartmut Berghoff and Adam Rome, Green Capitalism? Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, 2017); Christine Meisner Rosen, “Doing Business History in the Age of Global Climate Change,” Enterprise & Society 8, no. 2 (2007): 221–226; Hartmut Berghoff and Mathias Mutz, “Missing Links? Business History and Environmental Change,” Jahrbuch für Wirtshaftsgeschicte/Economic History Yearbook 59, no. 2 (2009): 9–22; Franck Aggeri and Mélodie Cartel, “Le changement climatique et les entreprises: Enjeux, espaces d’action, régulations internationales,” Entreprises et Histoire 1, no 86 (2017): 6–20; Andrew Smith and Kirsten Geer, “Uniting Business History and Global Environmental History,” Business History 59, no. 7 (2017): 987–1009; Antoine Acker, Volkswagen in the Amazon: The Tragedy of Global Development in Modern Brazil (Cambridge, 2017).
52 Bergquist, “Renewing Business History,” 5.
53 Hugh S. Gorman, “The Role of Business in Constructing Systems of Environmental Governance,” in Hartmut Berghoff and Adam Rome, eds., Green Capitalism?: Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, 2017): 33-50; Mattias Näsman and Sabine Pitteloud, “The Power and Limits of Expertise: Swiss–Swedish Linking of Vehicle Emission Standards in the 1970s and 1980s,” Business & Politics (2022): 2-4. On expertise, business, and the Club of Rome, see Matthias Schmelzer, ‘“Born in the Corridors of the OECD’: The Forgotten Origins of the Club of Rome, Transnational Networks, and the 1970s in Global History,” Journal of Global History 12, no. 1 (March 2017): 26–48.
54 Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change (New York, 2011). See also on the fossil fuel industry Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, “Rhetoric and Frame Analysis of ExxonMobil’s Climate Change Communications,” One Earth 4, no. 5 (2021): 696–719; Christophe Bonneuil, Pierre-Louis Choquet, and Benjamin Franta, “Early Warnings and Emerging Accountability: Total’s Responses to Global Warming, 1971–2021,” Global Environmental Change 71 (2021).
55 Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Thomas David, “Beyond Planetary Limits! The International Chamber of Commerce, the United Nations, and the Invention of Sustainable Development.” Business History Review, vol. 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 481–511. Also see Bergquist and David, “Business In(Action): The International Chamber of Commerce and Responses to Climate Change from Stockholm to Rio (1972-1992),” working paper.
56 Ben Huf, Glenda Sluga, and Sabine Selchow, “Business and the Planetary History of International Environmental Governance in the 1970s,” Contemporary European History 31, no. 4 (2022): 553–569.
57 Tim Bartley, “Transnational Corporations and Global Governance,” Annual Review of Sociology 44, no. 1 (2018): 152.
58 Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York, 2009).
59 See for instance: Benjamin C. Waterhouse, Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA (Princeton, 2014); Jennifer A. Delton, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism (Princeton, 2020). On the “Varieties of Capitalism” debate, see Niall G. MacKenzie, Andrew Perchard, Christopher Miller, and Neil Forbes, “Business-Government Relations and National Economic Models: A Review and Future Research Directions in Varieties of Capitalism and Beyond” Business History 63, no. 8 (2021): 1239-1252; Mira Wilkins, Kathleen Thelen, Richard Whitley, Rory M. Miller, Cathie Jo Martin, V. R. Berghahn, Martin Jes Iversen, Gary Herrigel, and Jonathan Zeitlin, “‘Varieties of Capitalism’ Roundtable,” Business History Review 84, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 637–674; Christian Marx and Morten Reitmayer, “Introduction: Rhenish Capitalism and Business History,” Business History 61, no. 5 (2019): 745–784.
60 Laurence Badel, Diplomatie et grands contrats: L’État français et les marchés extérieurs au XX e siècle (Paris, 2010); Sébastien Guex, Dominique Dirlewanger, and Gian-Franco Pordenone, La politique commerciale de La Suisse de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale à l’entrée au GATT (1945-1966) (Zürich, 2004); Rhenisch Thomas, Europäische Integration und industrielles Interesse: die deutsche Industrie und die Gründung der europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (Stuttgart, 1999); Werner Bührer, “Der BDI und die Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 40, no 2 (1992): 241-261; Petrini Francesco, Il liberismo a una dimensione: la Confindustria e l’integrazione europea, 1947-1957 (Milano, 2005); Alexis Drach, “From Gentlemanly Capitalism to Lobbying Capitalism: The City and the EEC, 1972–1992,” Financial History Review 27 (2020): 1–21; Rollings, British Business; Pitteloud, Les multinationales; Yohann Morival, Les Europes du patronat français depuis 1948 (New York, 2020).
61 Pitteloud, Les multinationales.
62 Laurence Badel already noted in 2014, the opening of several companies’ archives, allowing for a business history approach, can fruitfully contribute to the history of international relations and global governance: Laurence Badel, “Milieux économiques et relations internationales: bilan et perspectives de la recherche au début du XXIe siècle,” Relations internationales 157, no. 1 (2014): 3–23.
63 Mary Bridges’ forthcoming book demonstrates the role of US banks in this process in the early 20th century. See Branching Out: Banking, Credit, and the Globalizing US Economy, 1900s–1930s (Princeton, 2024).
64 Christy Thornton, Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global (Berkely, 2021); Amy C. Offner, “Review of Christy Thornton’s Revolution in Development,” NACLA Report on the Americas 53, no. 4 (2021): 442.
65 Amy Offner, Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Princeton, 2019).
66 Sandrine Kott, Organiser le monde: Une autre histoire de la guerre froid (Seuil, 2021).
67 Patricia Clavin, “Defining Transnationalism,” Contemporary European History 14, no. 4 (2005): 421–439. For more examples of communities and their governance projects see Marie-Laure Djelic and Sigrid Quack, eds., Transnational Communities: Shaping Global Economic Governance (Cambridge, 2010).
68 Patricia Clavin, “Histories and Futures of Business in a Turbulent World,” Business History Review 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 605–613.
69 For Ortoli and Davignon’s role, see Ballor, “Agents of Integration”; Warlouzet, Governing Europe. On summitry, see Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol and Federico Romero, eds., International Summitry and Global Governance: The Rise of the G7 and the European Council, 1974-1991 (London, 2014); Jean-Christophe Graz, “Qui gouverne? Le Forum de Davos et le pouvoir informel des clubs d’élites transnationales,” A contrario 1, no. 2 (2003): 67–89. On the ERT, see Maria Green Cowles, “Setting the Agenda for a New Europe: The ERT and EC 1992,” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 33, no. 4 (1995): 501–526; Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, “Transnational Class Agency and European Governance: The Case of the European Round Table of Industrialists,” New Political Economy 5, no. 2 (2000): 157–181; Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism and the Struggle over European Integration (London, 2002).
70 Quinn Slobodian, “Competing Projects in Global Governance,” Business History Review 97, no. 3 (Autumn 2023): 626–631.
71 Sylvain Laurens, Bureaucrats and Business Lobbyists in Brussels: Capitalism Brokers (New York, 2017).
72 Sabine Pitteloud, “Les multinationales comme catégorie politique: les années formatrices (1970-1990),” Entreprises et histoire 104, no. 3 (2021): 93–110.
73 Slobodian, Globalists; Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (London, 2023). On business shaping ideas, see also Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl and François Vallotton, “Business, anticommunisme et néolibéralisme: réseaux transatlantiques durant la Guerre froide,” Relations internationales 180, no. 4 (2019): 3–11; Glenda Sluga, “Twentieth-Century International Economic Thinking, and the Complex History of Globalization: A New Research Programme,” Working Paper EUI HEC, (2021): 1-11.
74 See for an empirical example, Andreas Goldthau and Llewelyn Hughes, “Saudi on the Rhine? Explaining the Emergence of Private Governance in the Global Oil Market,” Review of International Political Economy 28, no.5 (2020); Marco Bertilorenzi, “Futures of Europe: The City of London’s Commodity Exchanges, the European Economic Community, and the Global Regulation of Futures Trading (1960s–1980s),” Enterprise & Society, (2022): 1–28.
75 Jean-Christophe Graz and Andreas Nölke, Transnational Private Governance and Its Limits (London, 2007); Grace Ballor and Aydin B. Yildirim, “Multinational Corporations and the Politics of International Trade in Multidisciplinary Perspective,” Business and Politics 22, no. 4 (2020): 573–586.
76 Thomas David and Pierre Eichenberger, “Business and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: A Corporatist View,” Diplomatica 2, no. 1 (2020): 48–56.
77 Yohann Morival, “La fabrique des légitimités européennes: les acteurs de la confédération patronale européenne depuis 1952,” Critique internationale 74, no. 1 (2017): 33–51; Hélène Michel, ed., Représenter le patronat européen: formes d’organisation patronale et modes d’action européenne (Bern, 2013); Yohann Morival, “Reassessing the Historical Dynamics of European Business Associations: The Genesis of UNICE, Late 1940s to 1970s,” Business History (advanced online publication, 26 Oct. 2022), accessed 24 Oct. 2023, 1-18, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2022.2128109.
78 For an overview, see Christian Chavagneux and Marieke Louis, Le Pouvoir Des Multinationales (Paris, 2018); Eichenberger, Rollings, and Schaufelbuehl, “The Brokers of Globalization.”
79 Sectoral international business organizations were also important. See Paul Turberg, “Le patronat ouest-européen et américain et la structuration internationale de l’industrie pharmaceutique, 1963-1971,” Relations internationales 180, no. 4 (2019): 75–89; Karin Bugow, “The Role of Multinational Corporations in the Green Revolution, 1960s and 1970s,” (PhD diss, Jacobs University, 2021). See also the ongoing research project of Maiju Wuokko on the International Council of Chemical Associations and its “Responsible Care Programme.” On international organizations specialized to promote family firms, see Paloma Fernández Pérez and Nuria Puig, “Global Lobbies for a Global Economy: The Creation of the Spanish Institute of Family Firms in International Perspective,” Business History 51, no. 5 (2009): 712–733.
80 Rami Kaplan, “Who Has Been Regulating Whom, Business or Society? The Mid-20th-Century Institutionalization of ‘Corporate Responsibility’ in the USA,” Socio-Economic Review 13, no. 1 (2015): 125–155. See also, Michel Capron and Françoise Quairel-Lanoizelée, “Un éclairage sociohistorique et théorique de l’évolution des relations entreprise-société,” Reperes (2015): 13–42.
81 Genevieve LeBaron and Peter Dauvergne, Protest Inc.: The Corporatization of Activism (New York, 2014).
82 Marco Bertilorenzi, “The International Chamber of Commerce. The Organisation of Free-Trade and Market Regulations from the Interwar Period to the 1960s,” in Free Trade and Social Welfare in Europe. Explorations in the Long 20th Century, ed. Lucia Coppolaro and Lorenzo Mechi (London, 2020): 90-108.
83 Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, “The Transatlantic Business Community Faced with US Direct Investment in Western Europe, 1958–1968.” Business History 58, no. 6 (2016): 880–902; Ludovic Iberg, “Fighting for a Neoliberal Europe: Swiss Business Associations and the UNICE, 1970–1978,” Business History (2021): 1–16; Sabine Pitteloud, “Let’s Coordinate! The Reinforcement of a ‘Liberal Bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987,” Business History (2021): 1–21; Louis and Morival, “Au-delà de l’unité.”
84 Rollings and Kipping, “Private Transnational Governance.”
85 See, for example: Maclean, Harvey, Yang, and Mueller, “Elite Philanthropy.” Mazzucato, Mariana, and Rosie Collington, The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (London, 2023). Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty–First Century (Cambridge, MA, 2014).
