Business in Politics and Society

To join this network, click here. Note: All Memberships in CES Research Networks are open for CES individual members in good standing.

Click here to view the Business in Politics and Society Research Network Constitution.

This CES Network will bring together scholars from different disciplines who work on the activities and role of individual firms and business organizations in shaping economic, political and social development. The network aims to be broadly interdisciplinary and bring together scholars from academic fields that are traditionally well-represented at CES, such as political science and sociology, as well as from underrepresented fields such as (business) history, industrial relations, (corporate) law, economics, management, and business administration. These scholars follow a great variety of different methodological approaches and work in very different academic contexts. 

Because of their central role in shaping economic activity and the significant influence that they hold over political development, firms and business groups have long attracted much scholarly attention. This interest has only increased in recent year as European economies currently go through a process of sustentative economic, political and societal change that is both shaped by and shapes the behavior of business. For a variety of reasons, the political sway of business has increased significantly in recent decades, while firms are becoming more diverse in their structure and activities. In addition, there is an increased interest on the impact of the firm on individual behavior and the community.

While there is a broad interest in these developments there currently is no platform that connects scholars working on the role of business. This Network seeks to offer such a platform. It aims to be genuinely interdisciplinary in nature and incorporate a large variety of methodological approaches. 

Planned Outcomes

We anticipate that this network will be able to generate the following outcomes. By establishing a forum at CES for academics working on business it will foremost facilitate cross-disciplinary and cross-national research and collaborations. Project that may result from these collaborations include co-authored articles, edited volumes, special issues of peer reviewed journals, mini-symposia, linked panels at CES meetings, and in time possibly even a book series. In addition, the network is ideally suited to develop contacts with policy-makers and representatives of the business community itself. By establishing these contacts the network can facilitate its members’ ability to do primary research, provide funding for CES initiatives, and create new synergies by organize informative joint sessions with policy-makers and business representatives at CES. Finally, we anticipate that the network will help diversify the current CES membership by bringing in members from underrepresented disciplines such as (business) history, industrial relations, management, (corporate) law, and business administration. 

Co-Chairs:

Dennie Maurice Oude Nijhuis is Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam and assistant-professor at the Institute of History, Leiden University. Oude Nijhuis obtained his Ph.D. in History at Leiden University. His research focuses on the development of labor markets and social welfare in Europe and the United States. Oude Nijhuis is the author of Labor Divided in the Postwar European Welfare State(Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Christian Democracy, Labor and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), and editor of Business Interests and the Development of the Modern Welfare State (Routledge, 2018). He is a member of the editorial board of the Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History and has published in outlets such as International Labor and Working Class History, the Journal of Economic and Social Geography, the Journal of European Social Policy, the Journal of Policy HistoryLabor HistorySocio-Economic ReviewTwentieth Century British History, and World Politics.

Thomas Paster is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at the University of Roskilde and holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. His current research deals with business-politics relations in corporate tax policy. He is the author of the book The Role of Business in the Development of the Welfare State and Labor Markets in Germany (Routledge, 2012), and has published articles in journals such as World Politics, Socio-Economic Review, New Political Economy, British Journal of Industrial Relations, and Comparative Political Studies. 

Daniel Kinderman is Director of European Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science & International Relations at the University of Delaware. His current research focuses on business responses to right-wing populism. His articles have appeared in Socio-Economic Review, Regulation & Governance, The Journal of Common Market Studies, Business & Society, Policy and Society, Theory and Society, Business and Politics, The Journal of Business Ethics, Review of International Political Economy, Comparative European Politics, WSI-Mitteilungen, and Catalyst: A Journal of Theory & Strategy. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the New School for Social Research as well as a visiting scholar at the Social Science Research Center (WZB) in Berlin, and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Cornell University.

Co-Chairs: 

List of supporters

  • Alexandre Afonso, Leiden University
  • Pepper D. Culpepper, Oxford University
  • Cathie Jo Martin, Boston University
  • Marius Busemeyer, University of Konstanz
  • Vera Scepanovic, Leiden University
  • Neil Rollings, University of Glasgow
  • Daniel Kinderman, University of Delaware
  • Pierre Eichenberger, The New School for Social Research
  • Fabio Bulfone, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
  • Lukas Graf, Hertie School
  • Magnus Rasmussen, University of Oslo
  • Susanna Fellman, University of Gothenburg
  • Natascha van der Zwan, Leiden University
  • Marek Nazcyk, Oxford University
  • Matthieu Leimgruber, University of Zurich
  • Rikard Westerberg, Stockholm School of Economics
  • Susanne Pernicka, Johannes Kepler University Linz
  • Tim Dorlach, Koc University
  • Maiju Wuokko, University of Helsinki
  • Elsa Clara Massoc, European University Institute