Explaining Corporate Litigation Activity in an Integrated Framework of Interest Mobilization

Abstract

Although the pluralist theory of politics predicts that the focus of organizational activity should shift to the judicial arena whenever the expectations of government as regulator and the demands of regulated interests fail to converge, there has been little systematic research focusing on the question of business litigation as a specific form of interest mobilization. This article develops an integrated organizational choice model of interest mobilization to explain corporate litigation against the United States government. I argue that a company's decision to proceed with litigation is predicated upon the company's (1) resource capacity, (2) constraints of the regulatory environment, and (3) perception of procedural unfairness of the government in the administrative process. The argument is tested with data from a survey of top U.S. business executives whose companies unsuccessfully petitioned the government for administered protection between 1990 and 1995. The argument receives strong empirical support, and suggests that U.S. corporations facing import competition consider litigation an important component of their overall political strategy for obtaining nonmarket benefits.

The Antecedents of Disputes: Complaining and Claiming

“…41 I found something very similar in a study done in Toronto of the relationship between large corporations and their outside law firms (Kritzer 1984). 42 Two studies that touch on this question are by Unah (2003) and Public Citizen (Public Citizen 2004).…”

State Policy Innovation in Perspective

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“…This is, however, but one side of the equation. Research calls for greater efforts on the effects of political decisions on social policy (Howard 2007, p.109;see also Cortner 1968;Olson 1990;Shipan 2000;Smith 2006;Unah 2003). (2007) claim that the ambitious social policy initiative of the`war' on poverty, in the United States during the 1960s, has had a most controversial impact upon American Society because of "the dramatic expansion of public assistance programs for the ablebodied poor and their children" (p.37).…”