Varieties of Capitalist Interest and Capitalist Power: A Response to Swenson

We welcome Peter Swenson’s provocative and important article published in these pages, “Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden” (spring 2004). Like his broader corpus of work, Swenson’s argument is engaging, informed, and, to us at least, fascinating. It is also, however, extremely critical of arguments we have made about the role of business in the development of the American welfare state, some of which disputed Swenson’s account of employer influence during the formation of the 1935 Social Security Act.