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Business Interests, Political Parties and Democratic Rule

One of the lesser-acknowledged conclusions from analyses of the third wave relates to the importance of conservatives to democratic consolidation. Several landmark studies point to the centrality of protecting elite and business interests in democratic frameworks – for without that protection, it is posited, those interests may mobilize outside the democratic framework, destabilize politics, and support anti-democratic rule as they had in the past (Rueschemeyer, et al. 1992, 274;O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, 70-72; Middlebrook 2000, 288). Those early warnings seem to resonate with recent actions by business interests in Latin America (in Bolivia and Ecuador; see Eaton 2008), suggesting that there are continuing reasons for us to be concerned about the place of conservative, traditional, and business interests in democratic politics. Yet, in reality we know very little about the way that such interests are incorporated into the formal, institutional arena of parties and elections – especially as relates to business interests. This is true in spite of a clear, cross-regional rise in the presence of entrepreneurs themselves in politics. It is now time to step back and assess what is known about the organization of business interests and their relationship to electoral politics. In addition to reviewing that literature and exposing its inconsistencies and holes, this paper works through two sets of related hypotheses. First, it asks why the state of scholarship on business interests and institutional politics is what it is. Second, given the scant attention these questions have received in the literature, it generates a set of expectations for how we might see business interests behaving politically. I focus my empirical attention on Mexico, where business interests are historically speaking very well organized internally, to see what evidence that case offers to inform how we understand the political mobilization of business. I conclude by considering where we might look for the political mobilization of business interests – in the interest of identifying a research agenda for the future.