Insider job : corporate reforms and power resources in France, Italy and Spain

Abstract

This article explains the impact of liberalizing legal reforms on corporate practices. The cross-country comparison of five corporate governance indicators shows how the implementation of a similar set of liberalizing reforms had a puzzlingly divergent impact in France, Italy and Spain. An actor-centred coalitional approach is applied to demonstrate how such divergence was created by the same dynamic: the exploitation of liberalization by domestic corporate insiders. Leveraging their unparalleled power resources, corporate insiders mediate the effects of liberalizing legal reforms on corporate outcomes. Hence, liberalization, rather than favouring outsiders’ contention, further strengthened the insider nature of French, Italian and Spanish corporate governance. The validity of these claims is tested by looking at the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the power of corporate insiders.