Power of Inaction

Cornelia Woll is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Paris and Co-Director of MaxPo and LIEPP. She is the author of Firm Interests: How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade, also from Cornell, and coeditor of Economic Patriotism in Open Economies.

• 1. Bailout Games2. Crisis Management across the World3. The Power of Collective Inaction4. From Theory to Practice5. The United States and the United Kingdom6. France and Germany7. Ireland and Denmark8. Lessons Learned

The book is meticulously researched and cogently written. It speaks to and substantially develops the literature on the power of the financial industry in public policy, providing novel insights into the different relations between the banking industry and national governments across a variety of countries. The narrative is enriched by material gathered through several semi-structured elite interviews with policy-makers and representatives of the financial industry in a variety of countries.... One of the greatest achievements of the book is to draw attention to the (so far overlooked) politics of bank bailouts, rather than the economic conditions in which they took place.- Lucia Quaglia (Journal of Common Market Studies) This book compares bank bailouts across six countries in the wake of the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Using extensive interviews conducted with bankers, lawmakers, and other key players, the author argues that collective inaction by the financial industry allowed bankers to avoid shouldering more of the bailout, forcing national governments to deal with banks on a piecemeal basis and, ultimately raising the cost to taxpayers.... In all, the book argues persuasively that collective inactivity had important consequences for bailout arrangements and ultimately affected how the public and private sectors shared the cost burden of these massive policy decisions. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.(Choice)