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This paper develops and tests a theory of the performance determinants of a firm's nonmarket strategy in shaping public policy outcomes. Building on the concept of political market attractiveness, we argue that nonmarket performance is influenced by both the characteristics of a firm's regulatory and political environment, especially rivalry among interest groups or politicians, and by internal capabilities that enable a firm to mitigate political transaction costs. Using data on regulatory filings for rate increases made by U.S. electric utilities over a 13-year period, we find empirical support for our approach.

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We examine how firms use political strategies to protect economic rents created by mergers and acquisitions against dissipation by regulators. In regulated industries, regulators can impose costly merger conditions, for instance consumer rate reductions in the utilities sector, thereby reducing shareholder gains. We investigate empirically whether and how firms use election campaign contributions to politicians as a method of influencing regulatory merger approvals. In a statistical analysis of campaign contributions by all electric utilities from 1998 to 2006, we find that utilities increased their contributions in the year before they announced a merger and that merging utilities increased their contributions more in states with greater political party competition. Our findings contribute to political strategy research by providing novel evidence that firms integrate market and nonmarket strategies.

Managers can craft effective integrated strategy by properly assessing regulatory uncertainty. Leveraging the existing political markets literature, we predict regulatory uncertainty from the novel interaction of demand-and supply-side rivalries across a range of political markets. We argue for two primary drivers of regulatory uncertainty: ideology-motivated interests opposed to the firm and a lack of competition for power among political actors supplying public policy. We align three previously disparate dimensions of nonmarket strategy-profile level, coalition breadth, and pivotal target-to levels of regulatory uncertainty. Through this framework we demonstrate how and when firms employ different nonmarket strategies. To illustrate variation in nonmarket strategy across levels of regulatory uncertainty, we analyze several market entry decisions of foreign firms operating in the global telecommunications sector.