Steel and the State: Industry Politics and Business Policy Formation, 1940-1989

Abstract

Whether states are autonomous and whether unity exists within the capitalist class are questions that have long been debated by political and historical sociologists. I suggest that these questions are historically contingent, and conceptualize the state as an organization that is affected by its own structure and agendas, and by the political coalitions in its environment. I evaluate competing explanations of state business policy formation by examining policies that affected the U.S. steel industry between 1940 and 1989. There are four major findings: (1) organizations that represent political coalitions of capitalist groups in the state's environment form the basis of collective action and constitute the means to exercise political and economic power; (2) differential rates of accumulation affect business unity; (3) business policy is affected by the state's structure and agendas and the way in which its agendas conflict or coincide with the interests of the steel industry; (4) as the state's authority extends over more areas of economic activity and as it establishes more complex enforcement structures, state autonomy declines because these new structures provide class segments with legitimate mechanisms within which class members can exercise their political power.