Corporate political activity is usually operationalized and analyzed as financial contributions to candidates or political parties through political action committees (PACs). Very little attention has been paid to other dimensions, such as lobbying, in a systematic way. On a theoretical level we address the issue of how to conceive of PAC contributions, lobbying, and other corporate activities, such as charitable giving, in terms of the strategic behavior of corporations and the implications of “foreignness” for the different types of corporate political activity. On an empirical level we examine the political activities of Fortune 500 firms, along with an oversampling of U.S. affiliates of large foreign investors for the 1987–88 election cycle.
Since Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action (1965), it is impossible for political scientists to conceive of political participation without reference to his powerful argument linking numbers of participants, public goods, and participatory outcomes. What is puzzling is the poor empirical support for this argument in the domain where it should work best, namely explaining business political activity. Olson thought his arguments principally applicable to economic groups, and for the empirical development of his arguments Olson drew heavily on business interests, the most active segment of the interest group community. We explore these arguments with business political activities data by examining the statistical performance of various measures of market structure in determining business political activity, and find little empirical support. We do offer an alternative basis for business behavior lodged in both private and collective goods that preserves business rationality and also helps explain not only the amount of business political participation but the modes of business participation.
I analyze the governmental regulation of internationally traded goods produced by U.S. industries. General theories of regulation—most notably “capture” theories and the theory of “congressional dominance”—are used to analyze the decision-making behavior of the U.S. International Trade Commission, which plays a major role in approving and providing tariffs, quotas, and various types of nontariff trade barriers sought by these industries. Unlike previous studies, this one simultaneously accounts for both the supply and demand sides of trade regulation. This work seeks to predict, on a basis of domestic politics, the factors that affect the demand for, and supply of, trade protection for U.S. industries. The methodology consists of applying a nested logit framework to capture the decision behavior of the International Trade Commission and industries simultaneously. The analysis shows that industries do appear to self-select themselves in applying for protection from the International Trade Commission. In light of these findings, it appears that trade protection is subject to domestic political forces similar to those affecting other regulatory policy areas.
In 1984 Congress amended the antidumping and countervailing duty laws, mandating that the International Trade Commission (ITC) "cumulate" imports across countries when determining inju y. We estimate that cumulation increases the probability 4 an affirmative inju y determination by 20 to 30 percent and has changed the ITCs decision (?om negative to affirmative) for about one-third of cumulated cases. We also show that the protective effect of cumulation increases as the number of countries involved increases, holding import market share constant. That is, cumulated imports have a super-additive @ct on ITC decision-making.
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