The Political Power of Big Business: A Response to Bell and Hindmoor

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in debates about the power of business (Culpepper 2011; Bell 2012) and Bell and Hindmoor (2013) make an important, theoretically informed, but empirically rooted, contribution to that debate. In this response, we address both aspects of their contribution, arguing that their treatment of Lindblom is partial and, consequently, so is their explanation of the case. As such, we largely rely on their narrative of the evolution of the Australian mining tax, focusing first on critically examining Bell and Hindmoor’s theoretical position, before turning to their analysis of the case.