Market integration and transformation of business politics: diverging trajectories of corporatisms in Mexico and Turkey

Abstract

Abstract Transformation of interest politics in the context of globalization has been widely studied with respect to advanced countries. In a similar vein, this article examines the recent transformations and diverging national trajectories against the backdrop of global market integration, focusing on business politics in upper-middle-income countries. Tackling the ways in which domestic political arrangements refract the impact of global forces, the article indicates that the market integration process engenders diverging effects in national settings contingent upon executive–legislative relations. Where power is concentrated in the executive, market integration upholds a form of corporatism; and where legislative power increases, it promotes a form of pluralism. Based on the empirics of Mexico and Turkey, this article shows the links between increasing legislative power and emerging legislative lobbying in Mexico in contrast to increasing executive power and centralization and concentration of interest politics in Turkey. It delineates a major variation in national trajectories in business politics in the age of globalization—the rise of ‘elite-pluralism’ dominated by large firms in the former, and ‘competitive corporatism’ vastly controlled by the executive branch in the latter.