Financing the Campaigns of Women Candidates and Their Opponents

Abstract

Contrary to research from the 1970s, evidence since the 1980s suggests that women candidates compete evenly for campaign funds with male candidates. The existing evidence is less complete at the state legislative level than it is in congressional elections. The data presented here draw upon the campaign finance reports of state legislative candidates from three states from 1982 to 1990. The results suggest that women candidates usually raise more than similarly situated male candidates, but this does not result in an actual advantage because their male opponents also raise more than other male candidates. The patterns over time do not indicate that women candidates gained parity with male candidates during the 1980s but rather began that decade equal to men in campaign finance.     

Evidence of a transnational capitalist class‐for‐itself: the determinants of PAC activity among foreign firms in the Global Fortune 500, 2000–2006

Transnational capitalist class (TCC) theory is rooted in the claim that the globalization of the economy has led to a globalization of economic interests and of class formation. However, systematic evidence linking the indicators of transnational class formation with political behaviour is largely missing. In this article, I combine data on board of director interlocks among the 500 largest business firms in the world between 2000 and 2006 with data on the political donations to US elections of foreign corporations via the corporate political action committees (PACs) of their subsidiaries, divisions or affiliates. Controlling for the various interests of individual firms, I find that foreign firms that are highly central in the transnational intercorporate network contribute more money to US elections than do the less central foreign firms. Given prior research on board of director interlocks, this finding suggests that a segment of the transnational business community has emerged as a class‐for‐itself.     

Unions,PAC contributions,and the NAFTA vote

Political action committees (PACs), especially those controlled by organized labor and business, have been shown to affect Congressional voting. We explore how PACs influenced the House of Representatives’ vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA vote is analyzed because organized labor strongly opposed the treaty while business generally supported it and because of the straight-forward voting generated by its fast-track status. Probit analysis of a unique, unpublished data set containing information about PAC and non-PAC contributions to the 1992 House election campaigns demonstrates that Representatives who depended largely on labor PACs tended to oppose NAFTA, while Representatives who derived a large proportion of their campaign contributions from business PACs tended to favor its passage.     

Class struggle in campaign finance? Political action committee contributions in the 1984 elections

Pluralist and class-based theories offer alternative hypotheses about the political behavior of organized interests in the United States. Using network methods and data on political action committees' (PAC) contributions to congressional candidates in the 1984 elections, we identify interest groups with politically similar behavior in an attempt to assess these perspectives concerning elites in the United States. The analysis includes corporate, labor, membership association, and nonconnected PACs. Counter to pluralist expectations, we find just two large groups—one primarily business oriented and the other primarily labor/public-interest oriented. Our findings thus support a class-based interpretation of the nature of organized interests. These findings are framed in terms of the meaning of unity and fragmentation.     

Unrepresentative Information: The Case of Newspaper Reporting on Campaign Finance

This article examines evidence of sampling or statistical biasin newspaper reporting on campaign finance. We compile all storiesfrom the five largest circulation newspapers in the United Statesthat mention a dollar amount for campaign expenditures, contributions,or receipts from 1996 to 2000. We compare these figures to thoserecorded by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The averagefigures reported in newspapers exceed the figures from the FECby as much as eightfold. Press reports also focus excessivelyon corporate contributions and soft money, rather than on themore common types of donors—individual—and typesof contributions—hard money. We further find that thesebiases are reflected in public perceptions of money in elections.Survey respondents overstate the amount of money raised andthe share from different groups by roughly the amount foundin newspapers, and better-educated people (those most likelyto read newspapers) showed the greatest discrepancy betweentheir beliefs and the facts.     

Unions,corporations, and political campaign contributions: The 1982 house elections

Because legislation affects so many aspects of the labor market, unions have long considered the political arena to be a major battleground. This paper investigates fund raising, a primary ingredient of this political activity. Specifically, the pattern of campaign contributions from labor PACs (and corporate PACs) is explained as an interaction of supply and demand. The results suggest that the demand for funds depends on the tightness of the race, the tenure of the incumbent, and ideology. Contributors are more willing to support ideological allies, expected winners, and powerful candidates.     

Impression Management,Super PACs and the 2012 Republican Primary

Super Political Action Committees (PACs) are new organizations within American politics allowing for unlimited donations to candidate campaigns. Super PACs helped make the 2012 Republican primary the most well‐funded primary in American history. Both candidates and Super PACs spend much of their money on televised campaign ads. My study of the 2012 Republican primary expands existing literature concerning political impression management by examining advertising imagery in the era of Super PACs. I developed a typology of performance types from a qualitative content analysis of television advertisements for both candidates and Super PACs. The significance of Super PACs as they interact and overlap with the images of candidate ads calls for analysis of the changing front stage in the political realm.     

Campaign Finance and Policymaking: PACs,Campaign Contributions,and Interest Group Influence in Congress

The general public is skeptical of our current system of campaign finance and feels that members of Congress are corrupt. Although the scholarly literature on campaign contribution influence is mixed, there is growing consensus that Political Action Committees (PACs) and interest groups do, indeed, have a powerful influence on policymaking in Congress. In this article, the author reviews this literature and discusses how influence occurs. Findings reveal that influence is only very rarely an explicit quid pro quo exchange. Instead, it is typically an ongoing, implicit, reciprocal exchange that impacts multiple stages of the legislative process and yields contributors many dividends, such as softer regulations, lower taxes, and lucrative contracts – none of which are explicitly promised (except in rare cases of full‐blown bribery) but are, nonetheless, regularly granted. The social relationships between contributors and lawmakers are central to this process, as is the ability to get legislators to sway their colleagues.     

The causes of union political involvement: A longitudinal analysis

This study examines the political involvement of unions over the 1978, 1980, and 1982 congressional elections. An empirical model focusing on the campaign contributions made by unions and the number of registered lobbyists employed by unions is elaborated and tested. The findings suggest that unions’ political activities are systematically undertaken and that they have increased dramatically over the past three elections. Specific characteristics of unions, such as membership size and dependence on governmental regulations, directly affect the political involvement of unions. Further, given the current economic and political climate, it is likely that this political action will continue to increase. The authors are grateful to Jack Fiorito, Cynthia Gramm, David Lewin, Frank Lichtenberg, two anonymous referees, and the participants in the labor seminars at the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa for helpful comments on an earlier version of this study.     

Corporation as climate ambassador: Transcending business sector boundaries in a Swedish CSR campaign

At a time when corporations are addressing increasingly complex, global corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues, this study examines and evaluates the strategies used in Vattenfall's challenging and innovative CSR campaign which aimed at establishing the energy company as a credible climate ambassador. Based on an analysis of the campaign outcomes in terms of the distinct interests and competencies of business, government and civil sector actors, I suggest that the company's credibility was weakened by its portrayal of Vattenfall as being more intent on organizing a public, collective action to fight climate change than on securing company-related business interests. Two ways to ensure greater credibility in similar cases are proposed: communicating explicitly about company motives for conducting CSR campaigns, and carrying out CSR campaigns in collaboration with non-profit organizations.     

WAS 1980 SPECIAL?

Most recent sociological analysis of corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) behavior focuses on the 1980 election, but 1980 was highly unusual, with many characteristics of a critical or realigning election. Thus, previous findings that business was highly unified, or that ideological conservatives were more unified than pragmatic corporations, may be artifacts of special conditions in 1980. This study shows, however, that on a race-by-race basis business was even more unified in 1986 than in 1980. In 1986, as in 1980, conservative corporations were more unified, though they changed their behavior substantially between 1980 and 1986, becoming much more cautious.     

Berle and Means revisited: The governance and power of large U.S. corporations

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), Berle and Means warned of the concentration of economic power brought on by the rise of the large corporation and the emergence of a powerful class of professional managers, insulated from the pressure not only of stockholders, but of the larger public as well. In the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Berle and Means warned that the ascendance of management control and unchecked corporate power had potentially serious consequences for the democratic character of the United States. Social scientists who drew on Berle and Means in subsequent decades presented a far more benign interpretation of the rise of managerialism, however. For them, the separation of ownership from control actually led to an increased level of democratization in the society as a whole. Beginning in the late 1960s, sociologists and other social scientists rekindled the debate over ownership and control, culminating in a series of rigorous empirical studies on the nature of corporate power in American society. In recent years, however, sociologists have largely abandoned the topic, ceding it to finance economists, legal scholars, and corporate strategy researchers. In this article, I provide a brief history of the sociological and finance/legal/strategy debates over corporate ownership and control. I discuss some of the similarities between the two streams of thought, and I discuss the reasons that the issue was of such significance sociologically. I then argue that by neglecting this topic in recent years, sociologists have failed to contribute to an understanding of some of the key issues in contemporary business behavior. I provide brief reviews of four loosely developed current perspectives and then present an argument of my own about the changing nature of the U.S. corporate elite over the past three decades. I conclude with a call for sociologists to refocus their attention on an issue that, however fruitfully handled by scholars in other fields, cries out for sociological analysis.     

The development of a low-income housing finance sector in South Africa: Have we finally found a way forward?

Since the 1994 democratic elections, the South African government has been intent on encouraging the country's financial sector to extend finance to low-income households as a means of delivering an acceptable standard of housing through its housing subsidy scheme. This paper examines the history of lending to low-income black households beginning in the late 1980s and describes the problems encountered by the banks from the early 1990s onward. It also demonstrates how intertwined the development of housing finance has been with the formulation of the country's housing policy. As a means of understanding the development of the sector, the following issues are considered: the effort to mobilize mortgage finance via the banks; the shift in focus toward the use of micro-finance for housing purposes via non-bank lenders; the competition that has arisen between the banks and non-bank lenders; the recent attempt by government to compel the banks to lend through community reinvestment-type legislation and the banks’ response through the establishment of a Financial Sector Charter negotiation process aimed at transforming the entire financial sector. The paper concludes by offering some judgments as to whether this recent attempt by government and the banks to break through the decade-old housing finance logjam will be successful.     

Corporate Transformation to the Multilayered Subsidiary Form: Changing Economic Conditions and State Business Policy

Despite the prevalence of corporate change in the last decade, researchers have not examined whether a change occurred in the corporate form. The analysis here presents a historical case study of a large U.S. corporation and quantitative data on the largest 100 U.S. industrial corporations. The case study examines the effects of changing economic conditions and state business policy on the corporate form. This study demonstrates that the corporation changed to a multilayered subsidiary form (MLSF): a corporation with a hierarchy of two or more levels of subsidiary corporations with a parent company at the top of the hierarchy operating as a management company. Whereas rising debt and increasing competition in the 1970s and 1980s undermined corporations' capacity to accumulate capital, changes in state business policy in the mid-1980s provided the political-legal structure for corporations to restructure their assets as subsidiary corporations tax free. Changes in state business policy also provided a means for corporations to merge, acquire, and spin-off subsidiary corporations tax free. Quantitative data on the 100 largest U.S. industrial corporations show that while the multidivisional form decreased, the MLSF increased between 1981 and 1993. Findings support a capital dependence framework. The MLSF constructs liability firewalls among corporate entities and creates internal capital markets, reducing dependence on external capital markets.     

The Role of Gender in Local Campaign Financing:

Little is known about the role of gender in money politics. We examined the official campaign finance reports and election results for all local candidates in Charlotte, North Carolina, between 1975 and 1980. For candidates in 1978 and 1979, we also did a detailed study of all the contributors. Women obtain their campaign funds from somewhat different sources than men. Women collect money in smaller average amounts than men and list more of their contributors as "anonymous." Contributors to female candidates are more diverse in geographical and racial terms. Most importantly, contributing is aligned by gender: women are more likely to give to women candidates. Female candidates are able to raise and spend money for campaigns as well as men. However, women are a lot less likely to give money to campaigns than are men.     

Globalizing ‘Girl Power’: Corporate Social Responsibility and Transnational Business Initiatives for Gender Equality

The recent emergence of ‘transnational business feminism’ [Roberts, A. (2014). The political economy of ‘transnational business feminism’. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(2), 209–231] accompanied by numerous ‘transnational business initiatives for the governance of gender’ [Prügl, E., &; True, J. (2014). Equality means business? Governing gender through transnational public–private partnerships. Review of International Political Economy, 21(6), 1137–1169] constitutes a significant area of debate in the feminist political economy literature. In this paper I focus on the confluence of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda with the visibility of gender issues in development and the resultant corporate agenda for the promotion of women and girls’ empowerment. The paper draws on two gender-focused World Bank collaborations with private sector actors: the Global Private Sector Leaders Forum and the Girl Effect campaign. The paper argues that the dominant model of corporate citizenship inscribed within the discourse of transnational business initiatives is framed in terms of capitalizing on the potential power of girls and women, achieving an easy convergence between gender equality and corporate profit. I suggest that the construction of an unproblematic synergy between these goals serves to moralize corporate-led development interventions and therefore does not challenge corporate power in the development process, but instead allows corporations to subscribe to voluntary, non-binding codes and cultivate a socially conscious brand image.     

Training for Citizenship

Schools throughout the United States provide instruction on democracy, voting, and major institutions of government, but often excluded from the curriculum is a central reality of our political system: the role of money in elections. This article provides background information and pedagogical strategies to help teachers foster productive discussions on this issue. First, we summarize recent increases in U.S. election spending and five schools of thought on how to address this trend. Then we present various classroom discussion and assessment strategies for supporting students’ learning about our current campaign finance system and its potential alternatives. These processes can facilitate students’ development of important civic knowledge and skills and also fulfill a variety of state and national standards.     

Consecration and meritocracy in elite business schools: The case of a Swedish student union

Sociologists are paying increasing attention to the business and financial elites that control today's global economy; indeed, there's a great need to understand who these elites are, what they do, and what makes them tick, as individuals, and as a class. But we also need to understand how the economic elites aremade in the current social and economic system, and one significant way of doing this, is by examining elite business schools, that is, the institutions that aim to train and prepare people to assume important leadership and decision-making positions in business, finance and related sectors of critical importance to the management of modern capitalism. Based on the notion of consecration, I empirically examine how the student union of Sweden's premier business school, The Stockholm School of Economics, offers its members a learning environment partly separated from the school, and how this semi-independent organization contributes to making undergraduate students socially, morally and esthetically meritorious for elite jobs in primarily management consulting and finance; a process that is largely shaped by corporate actors that participate formally and informally in the student union activities. The paper contributes to the sociological literature on business schools and higher education and elites, both theoretically through the twin notions of meritocracy and consecration, and empirically through its unique focus on student union activities in an elite business school setting.     

The credibility of shock advocacy: Animal rights attack messages

This study examined the impact of a graphic animal rights campaign launched by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against alleged abuses on a corporate farm. It considered the impact of the campaign upon the credibility of the target of the campaign as well as the producer of the campaign. Results indicated that PETA's attack message against abuses at corporate pig farms was effective in eroding the credibility of the corporate food-industry raising animals for consumption. At the same time, PETA's credibility rose overall after participants viewed the PETA attack message.     

Union campaign activities and voter preferences

The impact of campaign activity on voting preferences in union representation elections is investigated using a panel study approach. The context of this study is a four-year, multicampus, university system, in which two faculty unions competed vigorously for representation rights for several years. We propose a multivariate model of individual voting intentions which, we argue, depend on the precampaign expected consequences of collective bargaining, recent changes in institutional conditions, various normative and value constraints, and union campaign activity. Both self-reports of exposure to campaign activity and exogenous measures of campus-specific organizing efforts are used in the analysis. The use of exogenous indicators of campaign activity, which we argue is more appropriate, suggests that campaign activity exerts no appreciable effect on the manner in which individuals vote in such elections. Policy implications of these findings are discussed. The authors are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for comments on an earlier version.