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Business politics is usually about attempts to exert influence rather than power. Evidence from Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2024

Stephen Bell  and
Andrew Hindmoor Open the ORCID record for Andrew Hindmoor [Opens in a new window]
Stephen Bell
Affiliation:
School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia
Andrew Hindmoor*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, UK
*
Corresponding author: Andrew Hindmoor; Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

We argue that the everyday language distinction drawn between power and influence is meaningful and significant. There is good reason to believe that much corporate lobbying activity which is currently described under the heading of business power is better understood as attempts to secure negotiated agreements based on exerting influence rather than power and that the latter is usually used only when attempts to use influence have failed. We develop an analytical distinction between influence, understood as successful efforts at persuasion, and power using Keith Dowding’s work on power. Drawing upon findings from interviews with corporate professionals operating at the coalface of business and government interaction in Australia, we show that lobbyists generally seek “quiet” behind-the-scenes accommodations with governments via attempts to exert influence rather than power.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 124 - 141
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Vinod K. Aggarwal

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Footnotes

‡

The original version of this article was published with an error in the article title. A notice detailing this has been published and the error rectified in the online and print PDF and HTML copies.

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