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This paper contributes to Comparative Political Economy (CPE) by developing an analytical concept of corporate welfare. Corporate welfare—the transfer of public funds and benefits to corporate actors with weak or no conditionality—is a prominent form of state-business relations that CPE scholarship regularly overlooks and misinterprets. Such transfers should be understood as a structural privilege of business in a globalized post-Fordist capitalism, and an increasingly common strategy through which states attempt to steward national economic dynamism within a highly constrained range of policy options. However, without a well-developed concept of corporate welfare—premised upon the key criterion of conditionality—studies that identify a "return" of the state in industrial planning misrepresent these transfers to business as a reassertion of state influence and control, rather than a reflection of state weakness and subordination. The paper provides the analytical building blocks to properly conceptualize transfers to business, works out the core challenges for empirical research, and provides empirical illustrations of this burgeoning phenomenon from the fields of unconventional monetary policy, privatization, and urban political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Recession renewed calls for a return of state activism in support of the European economy. The widespread nationalizations of ailing companies and the growing activism of national development banks led many to celebrate the re-appearance of industrial policy. Despite this reappraisal, however, comparative political economy (CPE) contributions to the study of industrial policy are still scarce. This review article critically overviews the existing literature linking CPE and industrial policy meeting three goals. First, to trace the evolution of the goals, protagonists, and policy instruments of industrial policy in the European Union (EU) since the post-war period. Second, to provide a periodization of the evolution of industrial policy based on the distinction between the inward-looking forms of state intervention prevalent until the late 1970s and the open-market industrial policy of later decades. Third, to outline future research pathways based on the integration between CPE, heterodox economics, and economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Relying on insights from the comparative capitalism debate, this article compares the industrial policy strategies implemented by the Italian and Spanish governments to favor the internationalization of domestic electricity and telecommunications incumbents. It is shown how the cross‐sectoral and cross‐country variation in the outcome of their industrial policy efforts—that is, successful or unsuccessful internationalization—is explained by the reciprocal power relationship between governments and domestic large shareholders ("blockholders"). Successful internationalization is conditional on the availability of two power resources the government can use to influence blockholders' behavior: ownership power and regulatory power. When these resources were available, governments were able to impose a stable ownership structure on national champions, leading to successful internationalization. When they were not available, ownership instability led to failure. The findings presented here contribute to the debate on new forms of state involvement in the economy in the neoliberal era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing to the debate on the state's role in helping domestic firms to internationalise, this paper compares the divergent performance of the Italian and Spanish telecommunications incumbents Telefonica and Telecom Italia (TI). Telefonica has grown since the early 1990s to become one of the largest telecommunications utilities worldwide, while TI is now a small firm controlled by the French media group Vivendi. This divergence occurred even though both the Italian and Spanish government implemented an activist industrial policy strategy aimed at favouring the internationalisation of, respectively, TI and Telefonica. The paper shows how these contrasting outcomes can be traced to the different regulatory power relationship between the state and domestic blockholders in the two countries. The findings shed light on the factors that lie behind the successful internationalisation of inward-looking firms active in regulated sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]