Corporate Power, American Democracy, and the Automobile Industry

This book offers a critical history of government policy toward the U.S. automobile industry, and uses that history to assess the impact of large corporations on American democracy.

Drawing together the main policy issues affecting the automobile industry over the past forty years–occupant safety, emissions, fuel economy and trade–the work examines how the industry established its hegemony over the public perception of vehicle safety to inhibit federal regulation, and the battle for federal regulation that succeeded in toppling this hegemony in 1966; the subsequent efforts to include pollution emissions and fuel economy under federal mandates in the 1970s; the industry’s resurgence of influence in the 1980s; and the mixed pattern of influence in the 1990s.