Precarious Ties

Relationships between political and business elites are crucial in determining a nation’s political-economic trajectory. Especially for authoritarian regimes that feature capitalist growth, understanding such relationships and why they change over time can tell us much about the fundamental nature of a regime and its degree of stability. In Precarious Ties, Meg Rithmire offers a novel account of the relationships between business and political elites in three authoritarian regimes in developing Asia. She introduces two conceptual models that explain the variation and instability found in state-business relations in authoritarian regimes.