Most scholarship on corporate political activity assumes that market forces wholly motivate firms’ political strategies. However, this conventional wisdom overlooks the role of employee groups in encouraging corporate activism. To evaluate whether employee groups are associated with firm social activism, we gathered all public statements in support of LGBT rights made by the five hundred largest publicly-traded US corporations from 2011 to 2017. In an exploratory observational analysis, we found robust evidence that in highly-educated workforces LGBT employee groups persuade management to take public stances in support of LGBT rights. Our findings suggest that internal pressure promotes activism on LGBT issues, and market, political, or social forces are insufficient to fully explain firm social activism. Although each does play an important role, since employee groups will use political, social, and especially market-based arguments to convince their managers to engage in activism.
Scholars have identified partisan differences in policy representation—with Republicans more often found to represent the rich, while Democrats align with the preferences of less affluent voters. This paper explores these partisan differences, questioning this simple conclusion on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Instead, we develop and test a theory in which elected officials of both parties represent their co-partisans, who agree with one another on many policy issues. Yet, on a subset of issues, upper class and lower class co-partisans have diverging policy preferences: rich and poor Democrats disagree on social issues while rich and poor Republicans disagree on economic issues. We analyze roll call voting in the U.S. Senate and find that, in these cases, senators of both parties better represent the preferences held by affluent members of their party. Our findings underscore the value in examining the content of policy debates and theorizing about different forms of representation.
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