Salience, Responsiveness and Business Power: Executive Pay Regulation in the UK and US

We examine how rising inequality has percolated into the policymaking system of the United Kingdom and the United States since 1990 by focusing on the rise of executive pay regulation as a subject of state action. Drawing on a variety of data sources from the two countries, we try to develop a more nuanced understanding of how different segments of public opinion counterbalance the advantages that accrue to private interests – especially those representing large financial firms – in the public policy process. To understand business power and its limits, we believe it is important to examine as systematically as possible the conditions under which public opinion, through the imperative of electoral accountability, works as a credible incentive for lawmakers to discount both the structural and instrumental power of business.