The focus of this article is on the Business Council of Australia (BCA), an association of the CEOs of the 100 or so largest companies operating in Australia. Since its inception the BCA has been an influential supporter of largely successful efforts to neoliberalize and internationalize the Australian economy. Running in parallel with these developments, however, the BCA has moved from being a “somewhat strong” to a relatively weak policy organization. This article argues these two trends are causally related. Neoliberal-inspired economic restructuring and economic internationalization have weakened the “logic of membership” and the “logic of influence” of the BCA, leading to a process of organizational involution. Furthermore, potential offsets to what I describe as the organizational predations of neoliberalism and internationalization—especially via a willingness or capacity to forge supportive or mutualistic relations with the state—have not been realized.
and A. Parbo, “Address to the 10th Anniversary Dinner” (speech given to the Business Council of Australia, Melbourne, October 14, 1993).
2.
The research reported in this article is partly based on a series of interviews conducted mainly during 2003-2004 with current and former BCA insiders, including all of the BCA’s former executive directors.
3.
George Polities, quoted in “Business Council: Performance and Challenges. Background Paper for a Review of the Council’s Activities and Processes” (Melbourne: Business Council of Australia, 1985).
4.
An internal review of the BCA’s functioning and performance in 1985 argued,
5.
It is a constant source of amazement to observers that bi-monthly Council meetings are normally attended by between 45 and 60 Council members, and that it is possible for a group that size to meaningfully determine or confirm policy. Despite the expectations of skeptics, after two years it is true to say that this is genuinely an organisation of Chief Executives.
6.
From “Business Council: Performance and Challenges,” 6.
7.
plus the updated version, under the same title, published by the Max Planck Institute (Köln: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, 1999).
8.
W. Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era: Weathering the Storm,” in Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, ed. J. R. Hollingsworth and R. Boyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 129-129.
9.
and P. C. Schmitter and W. Streeck, “Community, Market, State and Associations? The Prospective Contribution of Interest Governance to Social Order,” in Private Interest Government, ed. P. C. Schmitter and W. Streeck (London: Sage, 1985).
10.
W. Streeck, “Between Pluralism and Corporatism: German Business Associations and the State,”Journal of Public Policy3 (1983): 265-284.
11.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era.”
12.
S. Bell, “Between the Market and the State: The Role of Business Associations in Public Policy: Evidence from Australia,”Comparative Politics28 (1995): 25-54.
13.
See, for example, Schmitter and Streeck, The Organisation of Business Interests.
14.
This included an understanding that member CEOs could “opt out” of contentious BCA positions but still remain members.
15.
M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).
16.
F. D. Doner and B. R. Schneider, “Business Associations and Economic Development: Why Some Associations Contribute More than Others,”Business and Politics, no. 2 (2000): 263-263.
17.
Bell, “Between the Market and the State.”
18.
S. Bell, “The Dynamics of Business Collective Mobilisation: The Case of the Business Council of Australia,” unpublished paper, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
19.
S. Bell, Ungoverning the Economy: The Political Economy of Australian Economic Policy (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), ch. 8.
20.
and P. Sheldon and L. Thornthwaite, “Ex Parte Accord: The Business Council of Australia and Industrial Relations Change,”International Journal of Business Studies (October 1993): 37-55.
21.
McLaughlin, “How Business Relates to the Hawke Government,”162-163.
22.
See also R. Eccleston, The Thirty Year Problem: The Politics of Australian Tax Reform (Sydney: Australian Tax Research Foundation, 2004). The key impetus for this campaign, however, did not come from the BCA but from an alliance between the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS).
23.
Parbo, “Address to the 10th Anniversary Dinner,”5-5.
24.
and Parbo, “Address to the 10th Anniversary Dinner.”
25.
Business Council of Australia, Review of the Business Council of Australia (Melbourne: Business Council of Australia, 1996), 6-6.
26.
Business Council of Australia, Review of the Business Council of Australia,1-1.
27.
and D. Forman, “Industry Bodies Change Gear,”Business Review Weekly, November 25, 1996.
28.
M. McLachlan, “Big Business Splits over Greenhouse,”Australian Financial Review, November 22, 2002.
29.
A. Wood, “BCA Proposes to Recapture Its Relevance,”Australian, March 2, 1999.
30.
and R. Skeffington, “Big Business Gags Itself,”Business Review Weekly, March 16, 2001.
31.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era.”
32.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era,”128-128.
33.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era,”130-130.
34.
Bell, Ungoverning the Economy, ch. 4.
35.
See S. Bell, Australian Manufacturing and the State: The Politics of Industry Policy in the Post-war Era (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
36.
W. Coleman and W. Grant, “Business Associations and Public Policy: A Comparison of Organisational Development in Britain and Canada,”Journal of Public Policy, no. 4 (1984): 228-228.
37.
See N. Fligstein, The Architecture of Markets (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), ch. 7.
38.
Business Council of Australia, “Business Council: Performance and Challenges,”6-6.
39.
Business Council of Australia, “CEO Tenure and Turnover in Australia,”BCA Quarterly, 2nd ed. (Melbourne, Business Council of Australia, 2003-2004).
40.
T. Skotnicki, “Hey, You’re Supposed to Be on Our Side,”Business Review Weekly, July 14, 2000. If anything, the government’s business constituency has consisted of small and medium-sized business, as represented by bodies such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. As one respondent commented,
41.
The liberal government is really small business focused; they’re populist, that’s their nature. They run a vote machine.... And I think the government’s view of the BCA is that they are irrelevant sort of posturing, not part of the main game.... If you went to the government and they spoke to you openly about the BCA, you’d get worse than that.
42.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era,”132-132.
43.
Bell, Australian Manufacturing and the State.
44.
See Bell, Ungoverning the Economy, ch. 8, for an account of the disjunctures between a corporatist wages policy and the broader thrust of neoliberal policies (albeit with some social democratic moderation) under the Hawke government.
45.
S. Bell, “Australian Business Associations: New Opportunities and Challenges,”Australian Journal of Management19 (1994): 137-158.
46.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era,”132-132.
47.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era,”132-132.
48.
Bell, “Between the Market and the State.”
49.
These distinctions are outlined in W. Coleman, “Analysing the Associative Action of Business: Policy Advocacy and Policy Participation,”Canadian Public Administration, no. 28 (1985): 413-433.
50.
N. Mitchell, The Conspicuous Corporation: Business, Public Policy, and Representative Democracy (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997), 101-101.
51.
S. Bell, “The Political Power of Business,” in Business-Government Relations in Australia, ed. S. Bell and J. Wanna (Sydney: Harcourt Brace, 1992).
52.
and D. Swank, “Politics and the Structural Dependence of the State in Democratic Capitalist Nations,”American Political Science Review, no. 86 (1992): 38-54.
53.
J. S. Hacker and P. Pierson, “Business Power and Social Policy: Employers and the Formation of the American Welfare State,”Politics and Society, no. 30 (2002): 277-325.
54.
and P. Bernhagen and T. Brauninger, “Structural Power and Public Policy: A Signaling Model of Business Lobbying in Democratic Capitalism,”Political Studies, no. 53 (2005): 43-64.
55.
Bell, Australian Manufacturing and the State, 104-104.
56.
and A. Dreher, “The Influence of Globalisation on Taxes and Social Policy: An Empirical Analysis for OECD Countries,”European Journal of Political Economy, no. 22 (2006): 179-201.
57.
Offe and Wiesenthal, “Two Logics of Collective Action,”86-86.
58.
Hacker and Pierson, “Business Power and Social Policy,”22-22.
59.
Business Council of Australia, Review of the Business Council of Australia,1-1.
60.
and A. Polsky, “When Business Speaks: Political Entrepreneurship, Discourse and Mobilisation in American Partisan Regimes,”Journal of Theoretical Politics, no. 12 (2000): 455-476.
61.
J. Dawkins, “Business-Government Relations: A Decade of Economic Reform and the Role of Business” (Corporate Public Affairs oration, Melbourne, Centre for Corporate Public Affairs, July 14, 1994), 4-4.
62.
Dawkins, “Business-Government Relations,”4-4.
63.
Coleman, “Associational Governance in a Globalising Era,”132-132.
64.
The (1996-) Howard government’s relationship with the BCA could probably be described as indifferent. A number of respondents commented that the government was sensitive to criticism, had tended to run its own policy agenda, and had not relied on or sought much in the way of active engagement with business associations, especially the BCA (Skotnicki, “Hey, You’re Supposed to Be on Our Side”). The Howard government has also expected more active support from the business community than has been forthcoming, and this too has affected the relationship.
65.
and A. Wilts, “Europeanization and the Means of Representation by National Business Associations,”European Journal of Industrial Relations, no. 7 (2001): 269-286.
