This paper discusses the origins of rating in the second half of the nineteenth century. We review and criticize existing narratives, which—echoing a story told by lawyers favorable to (or employed by) the agencies—have alleged that a cultural shift in normative views, evidenced in an evolution of court decisions, provided legal protection (against libel) to agencies, and permitted the development of printed credit reports. Such a view is inconsistent with evidence from actual judicial decisions and from our exploration of archival material. Looking at both litigated and settled cases, we show that the rise of mercantile agencies in the late nineteenth century was the product of a farsighted corporate strategy applied ruthlessly to a legal system that was still very reluctant to permit the agencies to “commoditize” credit.

Corporate elites have been all-male bastions until the twenty-first century. The recent inclusion of women in the corporate elite needs explanation because it is an abrupt change in recruitment practices. We consider female presence in corporate boards as a sign of the democratization of elite social networks. Building on a case study of the Netherlands that covers the last four decades, we show that the corporate elite has become more open to nonmembers of traditional elites. In the process, women have also entered the boardroom. Initially, these were predominantly female politicians, but more recently many large corporations have recruited foreign females. We argue that the incremental feminization of the corporate elite was in the beginning—that is in the 1970s—initiated by the state but was subsequently pushed forward by the internationalization of corporate governance. We have traced the professional background of all female board members of the largest firms in the Netherlands over the period 1969–2011. We show that the female board members do not form a homogeneous group. The first wave of female directors had a political background, the second wave had an academic background, whereas the third wave was recruited from within the corporations. In this third wave, foreign female directors became predominant. Elites open up their ranks and privileged positions to women, but they do so reluctantly and under outside pressure.

This article examines the business–government relations during the policy and decision-making processes that preceded the 1938 corporate tax reform in Sweden. This reform involved creating a new tax system under the turbulent economic conditions of the interwar period. But while literature on tax history has found that such circumstances often disable actors from agreeing on tax policies, a constructive outcome was still reached in the Swedish case. In this regard, it is demonstrated that one crucial factor behind the creation of the 1938 corporate tax reform was the formation of a coalition between the Social Democratic party and the business peak associations around a number of areas where their taxation interests coincided. Here, the Social Democrats agreed to shelter profits from corporations as long as they were managed according to the intentions of their countercyclical economic policy that encouraged industrial investments and employment expansion.

The article addresses the question to what extent American antitrust policy in Germany and Italy during the 1950s, was a success or not. Did these nations adopt this policy, did they adapt themselves to it, or did they completely reject it? By a detailed comparison of these two big European nations, Germany and Italy—both defeated powers of the Second World War, and both therefore strongly dependent on postwar American aid—the effects of the American antitrust policy will be analyzed. Eventually, the Germans better adapted, after initial resistance of German big business, to the American plans than the Italians, however, only in an amended and softer form. The Italian resistance—but we even use the expression prolonged rejection—to the economic reforms were much stronger. The US administration envisioned a unified free European market without cartels as early as 1943, however, it would take another fifty years before these ideas would be implemented.

Founded in 1956 by Billy Graham, L. Nelson Bell, and a cadre of evangelical theologians and business leaders, Christianity Today (CT) was—and still is—the world’s foremost Christian periodical. From the late 1950s through the early 1970s, CT’s editors also branded it as a new vehicle for conservative discourse and public assertiveness, especially regarding the relationship of the state to church, business, and society. Given CT’s theological and political stances, it garnered financial support and institutional direction from oil executive J. Howard Pew. This essay examines Pew’s contributions as a way of understanding the crucial role played by business elites in the construction of American conservative evangelicalism. Moreover, through a case study of CT, this essay re-periodizes the origins of corporate-evangelical alliances to the early twentieth century and evaluates the relative successes and failures of conservatives in postwar evangelicalism, state policy, and cultural politics.