Politics and regulation

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.

This panel has been created by the Program Committee so does not need a rationale.

The term “middleman” elicits a moral judgment. For some, middlemen are parasites that leach vitality from deals to which they contributed little to nothing. For others, middlemen are the exact opposite: the crucial conduits of deals that would not happen without them. Perhaps, as the term implies, they are instead something in between, simultaneously superfluous and essential. Attention to the middleman character, tasked with mediating overlapping yet conflicting interests, captures the contradictions of the state in capitalist society.

The global economy limped into peace following the conclusion of hostilities in 1919. Though many of the post-war crises stabilized by the early 1920s, agriculture never recovered its gait. This proposed panel draws on labor, industry, and international finance perspectives to investigate how rubber and cotton markets sought to establish some control over their economic context. Uniting all three papers is the shared specter of a fading British Empire’s influence over global agriculture.

Spurred by recent scholarship like that found in "The Military and the Market," edited by Mark Wilson and Jennifer Mittelstadt, this panel will convene three PhD candidates whose research examines various ways that defense policy affected workers during the Cold War. With sources that account for blue and white collar workers, defense contracting firms and managers, and policy makers in Washington, we hope to reinvigorate the study of this vital nexus in the US political economy.

Business elites have historically played key roles in shaping public policy. But the perception of what business elites have done across place and time has changed with changing historical conditions. This panel brings together contributions from several different perspectives and from different countries to explore what business elites have done to shape (1) the development of the British empire, (2) U.S. wartime tax policies, and (3) late twentieth-century American airline regulations.

Collaboration between governments and private, non-government entities has been a long-standing yet under-examined aspect of modern business history. While today it is formalized through official designations and terminologies such as ‘Public-private partnerships’, the concept has long roots. Through examining specific historical cases, these papers will demonstrate how governments, non-governmental organizations, workers and labor unions collaborated to facilitate both the development of infrastructure at home and the provision of aid abroad in a time of national emergency.

This session explores how deceptive commercial practices generate labor – both on the side of those orchestrating frauds and those trying to prevent them. Though deception and trade have long gone hand in hand, technological advancements, new techniques of persuasion, and changes to the corporate form added new layers of ambiguity to market practices in the twentieth century. In response, reformers called for greater public oversight while seemingly virtuous enterprises called for self-regulation.

This roundtable showcases the innovative work of five emerging scholars, each with different methodological perspectives, to the complex interrelationship between the railroads, their stakeholders, and the government. Ben Kletzer’s examination of railroads in Maoist China challenges conventional interpretations of the centralized authority of the Chinese Communist Party. Kimberly Kracman delineates the ability of the Interstate Commerce Commission to control railway management and institutionalize the claims of diverse stakeholders on the assets and profits of the large corporation.

This panel explores the intersection of business history, public policy, and advocacy, highlighting the potential for historical research to inform contemporary policymaking and implementation. Panelists will discuss the policy relevance of business history, including its role in identifying relevant examples of successful and failed past programs and providing actionable insights on contemporary policy debates.