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Abstract
This article examines Cornelia Woll's book on the "power of collective inaction" in which she argues that banks could extract favorable bailouts in the recent global financial crisis by remaining collectively inactive. Collective inaction forces governments to bear the brunt of the crisis resolutions. While this book provides an illuminating account of banking bailouts in several countries, its argument neglects the power of governments and of individual banks. Governments did not have to wait for banks' (in)action but could impose punitive conditions on banks. And the resistance by banks did not originate from an incapacity to act collectively but from deliberate actions by individual banks to obstruct government intrusion. Rather than inaction on the part of banks, these interactions between governments and banks involved deliberate action and their outcome depended on more conventional notions of state-business power relations.

Defence date: 24 November 2014 ; Examining Board: Professor Pepper D. Culpepper, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Mark Hallerberg, Hertie School of Governance; Professor Ellen M. Immergut, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute. ; In this thesis, I show that governments bail out banks because banks are critical to capitalist democracies. Banks enjoy a public safety net. Governments, however, can make banks pay for this protection. Two of this dissertation's conclusions stand out. The first is that the influence of business through lobbying and other channels of instrumental power is exaggerated. Banks cannot secure sweetheart deals by pointing to their track record of campaign contributions. Bailouts are not for sale. During crises, governments can use banks' dependence on the domestic market to force them to bear the bailout costs. Only highly international banks, can parry this threat by using their structural power strategically. The second conclusion is that financial crises remove veto points. They create a large threat and leave little time for deliberation, which prompts lawmakers defer to the executive branch. Thus, financial crises shift power from legislatures—even strong ones, like the US Congress—to the head of government.

First published online : September 24, 2014 ; The 2008 bailout is often taken as evidence of the domination of the American political system by large financial institutions. In fact, the bailout demonstrated the vulnerability of American banks to government pressure. Large banks in the United States could not defy regulators, because their future income depended on the American market. In Britain, by contrast, one bank succeeded in scuttling the preferred governmental solution of an industry-­-wide recapitalization, because most of its revenue came from outside the United Kingdom. This was an exercise of structural power, but one that most contemporary scholarship on business power ignores or misclassifies, since it limits structural power to the automatic adjustment of policy to the possibility of disinvestment. We show that structural power can be exercised strategically, that it is distinct from instrumental power based on lobbying, and that it explains consequential variations in bailout design in the UK, US, France, and Germany.

The 2008 bailout is often taken as evidence of the domination of the US political system by large financial institutions. In fact, the bailout demonstrated the vulnerability of US banks to government pressure. Large banks in the United States could not defy regulators, because their future income depended on the US market. In Britain, by contrast, one bank succeeded in scuttling the preferred governmental solution of an industry-wide recapitalization, because most of its revenue came from outside the United Kingdom. This was an exercise of structural power, but one that most contemporary scholarship on business power ignores or misclassifies, since it limits structural power to the automatic adjustment of policy to the possibility of disinvestment. We show that structural power can be exercised strategically, that it is distinct from instrumental power based on lobbying, and that it explains consequential variations in bailout design in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Germany.

The project analyzes how societies' vulnerabilities to different types of policy responses to the crisis affects their willingness to engage in policies that constribute to a sustainable solution of the euro crisis. The argument builds on the insight that the euro crisis is, at its root, a balance-of-payments crisis and argues that the resulting distributive struggles surrounding the politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries are distinct but related, and should therefore be analyzed in a unified framework. The vulnerability to internal reforms is inversely related to the willingness to support (in surplus countries) or demand (in deficit countries) transfer payments to crisis countries.

Empirically, the project examined how vulnerability profiles affect domestic crisis politics and policies on two levels of analysis, the interest-group and the national level. It used a mixed-methods research design that combined a quantitative analysis of national vulnerability profiles and crisis politics in a wider set of deficit and surplus countries, interest-group surveys in selected Eurozone surplus and deficit countries and qualitative comparative case studies of the domestic politics of the euro crisis in these countries.

The overarching goal of the project was to generate an encompassing picture of the distributional politics of the euro crisis and a better understanding of the constraints under which European policymakers operate in their attempts to solve the crisis.

The project analyzes how societies' vulnerabilities to different types of policy responses to the crisis affects their willingness to engage in policies that constribute to a sustainable solution of the euro crisis. The argument builds on the insight that the euro crisis is, at its root, a balance-of-payments crisis and argues that the resulting distributive struggles surrounding the politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries are distinct but related, and should therefore be analyzed in a unified framework. The vulnerability to internal reforms is inversely related to the willingness to support (in surplus countries) or demand (in deficit countries) transfer payments to crisis countries.

Empirically, the project examined how vulnerability profiles affect domestic crisis politics and policies on two levels of analysis, the interest-group and the national level. It used a mixed-methods research design that combined a quantitative analysis of national vulnerability profiles and crisis politics in a wider set of deficit and surplus countries, interest-group surveys in selected Eurozone surplus and deficit countries and qualitative comparative case studies of the domestic politics of the euro crisis in these countries.

The overarching goal of the project was to generate an encompassing picture of the distributional politics of the euro crisis and a better understanding of the constraints under which European policymakers operate in their attempts to solve the crisis.