Shattering Glass-Steagall: The Power of Financial Industries to Overcome Restraints

In this chapter, we present a case that demonstrates how a new legal and regulatory framework, passed with strong public support, may provide coercive and mimetic legitimacy and yet – despite apparently achieving “taken-for-granted” status – remain vulnerable to contestation, continued resistance, and eventual defeat. We find the settlement of a conflict in the public arena to be like a truce, rather than a permanent reframing that alters the cognitive mapping of those adversely affected by the outcome. That is, apparent settlement through regulation does not necessarily forestall the possibility that the parties that lost out in the conflict might mobilize their structural and symbolic resources to resist and reverse the new status quo.