Institutional influences on business power: how 'privileged' is the Business Council of Australia?

This paper explores the institutional and political dynamics of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), a unique form of big business association which relies on the active involvement of its one hundred or so CEO members. The paper argues that associations such as the BCA confront a range of serious institutional problems in their attempts to wield political power, or more modestly perhaps, policy influence. First, they confront a disconnect between 'structural' and 'instrumentalist' articulations of business power. The key source of business power resides in business control over the economy and the investment process, a form of power wielded at the company level not at the level of business associations. When engaged in instrumentalist or overt forms of political activism, the BCA also confronts serious collective action problems. It is also argued that the influence of the BCA seems to have declined over time and that this can partly be traced back to declining CEO commitment rooted in changing institutional and structural dynamics in the corporate world. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.