Important perspective on Corporate governance provided in new book by IR/PS Professor Peter A. Gourevitch
10/31/2005
Paula Cichocka,
"Peter Gourevitch and James Shinn brilliantly question the received wisdom about state regulation of corporate governance in this resolutely empirical and resolutely political book…This book should be required reading for students of corporate governance in the United States and beyond." - Frank Dobbin, Harvard University, author of Forging Industrial Policy: An important new perspective on worldwide corporate governance can be found in Political Power & Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance by distinguished scholars Peter Gourevitch & James Shinn (published in October by Princeton University Press). Its approach varies from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. This highly accessible book explains how politics shapes corporate governance – how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. The authors explain how the world's largest firms are run, how ownership and regulatory matters differ in various countries, and the worldwide implications of the collapse of such companies as Enron, Worldcom and Parmalat. Gourevitch is a professor of Political Science and founding dean of the University of California, San Diego’s (UCSD's) Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS). He is the author of Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises and former co-editor of International Organization. Chosen this year for a Guggenheim Fellowship, Gourevitch accepted a Russell Sage Fellowship and is currently in residence in New York City. Shinn is a visiting professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he teaches courses on technology and foreign policy. Previously he worked in the U.S. State Department's East Asia Bureau and was later a general manager, entrepreneur, and outside director for fifteen years in the high tech industry at various firms including Dialogic, which he co-founded. Established in 1986, UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) is the premiere and only U.S. professional school offering business-savvy training with a focus on policy, economics and technology in the Pacific Rim. IR/PS is shaping the Pacific Century by training its leaders, creating ideas and supporting networks to build a Pacific community. More information on the graduate program and its faculty can be found on its web site at: http://irps.ucsd.edu.. IR/PS Media Contact: Paula Cichocka, (858) 534-1465, pcichocka@ucsd.edu
United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age
