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What does political science as a discipline contribute to the understanding of the relationship between business and government? The field has long been a stepchild within the discipline with many fewer practitioners than the study of fields such as voting behavior, political parties, or legislatures. And yet, the relatively small number of political scientists involved in the field has generated at least four distinct debates on business and government. The first debate ironically concerns claims that the study of politics has relatively little to contribute to understanding business and government. In a highly influential book published four decades ago, the then prominent American political scientist, Charles Lindblom, argued that markets constituted a prison that robbed democratic governments of effective choice.