The Political Strategies and Unity of the American Corporate Inner Circle: Evidence from Political Donations, 1982–2000

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 580-608
Author(s):  
Jennifer A Heerwig ◽  
Joshua Murray
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategies ◽  
Corporate Elite ◽  
Inner Circle ◽  
Corporate Elites

Abstract Recent work has offered competing explanations for the long-term evolution of corporate political action in the United States. In one, scholars have theorized that long-term structural changes in the American political and economic landscape may have radically transformed inter-corporate network structures and changed the political orientation of corporate elites. In another, a small group of corporate elites continues to dominate government policy by advocating for class-wide interests through occupying key positions in government and policy planning groups. We offer new evidence of patterns in and predictors of political strategies among the nation’s elite corporate directors. We utilize an original dataset (the Longitudinal Elite Contributor Database) linked with registries of corporate directors and their board memberships. We ask: (1) has the political activity, unity, or pragmatism of the corporate elite declined since 1982; and (2) are individuals who direct multiple firms more pragmatic in their political action? Evidence suggests that corporate elites are more politically active and unified, and continue to exercise pragmatic political strategies vis-à-vis their campaign donations. Using random- and fixed-effects models, we present evidence to suggest that becoming a member of the inner circle has a significant moderating effect on elite political behavior. We offer an alternative mechanism of elite coordination that may help explain the continued political cohesion of the corporate elite.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Rifle Association ◽  
Gun Policy ◽  
Competitive Shooting ◽  
Military Preparedness

This chapter focuses on the political power of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and asks the questions: What is the source of its power? How does it operate? How has it shaped gun policy and the broader political system? It looks beyond the NRA's use of financial resources and turns instead to what the chapter describes as ideational resources: the identity and ideology it cultivates among its members, which have enabled it to build an active, engaged, and powerful constituency. The chapter contends that the NRA has played a central role in driving the political outlooks and political activity of its supporters — activity that has had both direct and indirect influence on federal gun policy in the United States. Even from its earliest days as a relatively small organization dedicated to marksmanship, competitive shooting, and military preparedness, the NRA cultivated a distinct worldview around guns — framing gun ownership as an identity that was tied to a broader, gun-centric political ideology — and mobilized its members into political action on behalf of its agenda. The chapter analyzes how a group can construct an identity and an ideology, and what happens when it aligns these behind a single party.

Strategies of Justice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burke A. Hendrix
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Political Choices

Political theorists often imagine themselves as political architects, asking what an ideal set of laws or social structures might look like. Yet persistent injustices can endure for decades or even centuries despite such ideal theorizing. In circumstances of this kind, it is essential for political theorists to think carefully about the political choices normatively available to those who directly face persistent injustices and seek to change them. The book focuses on the claims of Aboriginal peoples to better treatment from the United States and Canada. The book investigates two intertwined issues: the kinds of moral permissions that those facing persistent injustice have when they act politically, and the kinds of transformations that political action may bring about in those who undertake it. The book argues for normative permissions to speak untruth to power; to circumvent or nullify existing law; to give primary attention to protecting one’s own community first; and to engage in political experimentation that reshapes future generations. The book argues that, when carefully used, these permissions may help political actors to avoid co-optation and self-delusion. At the same time, divisions of labor between those who grapple most closely with state institutions and those who keep their distance may be necessary to facilitate escape from persistent injustice over the long term.

The Realist–Pacifist Summit Meeting of March 1942 and the Political Reorientation of Ecumenical Protestantism in the United States

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Summit Meeting ◽  
The World ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
First Moment

This chapter analyzes the consolidation in 1942 of the two major, religiously defined institutional forces of the entire period from World War II to the present. The Delaware Conference of March 3–5, 1942, was the first moment at which rival groups within the leadership of ecumenical Protestantism came together and agreed upon an agenda for the postwar world. The chapter addresses the following questions: Just what did the Delaware Conference agree upon and proclaim to the world? Which Protestant leaders were present at the conference and/or helped to bring it about and to endow it with the character of a summit meeting? In what respects did the new political orientation established at the conference affect the destiny of ecumenical Protestantism?

Who Runs the Firm? A Long-Term Analysis of Gender Inequality on Swiss Corporate Boards

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE GINALSKI
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Corporate Boards ◽  
The Past ◽  
Corporate Elite ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Recent Arrival ◽  
Women On Corporate Boards ◽  
Corporate Elites ◽  
Term Analysis

The recent arrival of women on corporate boards has been extensively discussed in the literature. However, most of the studies focus on very recent times. This article analyzes the presence of women on the corporate boards of the largest firms in Switzerland across the past hundred years. It shows that until the beginning of the 1970s, the very few women sitting on the boardrooms belonged to the families owning the firms. Two main factors contributed then to the progressive opening of the corporate elites to women. First, the extending in 1971 of “universal suffrage” to women led to a feminization of the political elites, and women with a political profile entered the boardrooms of firms in the distribution and retailing sector. Second, the increasing globalization of the economy at the end of the twentieth century contributed to weaken the cohesion of the very male and Swiss corporate elite. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, the presence of women remained low in international comparison, and they were still hitting the “glass ceiling” regarding the top positions in the firm.

scholarly journals Reconceptualising Solidarity in the Social Factory: Cultural Work between Economic Needs and Political Desires

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
Anke Strauß ◽  
Alexander Fleischmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Factory ◽  
Economic Reasoning ◽  
Economic Needs

This article reconceptualises work-based solidarity as political action that is distinct from, yet interlinked with, a socio-economic mode of activity. To extend existing relational approaches to work, this article reads a case study of a cultural initiative through Hannah Arendt’s notions of labour, work and (political) action. With the latter being a form of engagement marked by plurality – the co-presence of equality and difference – the analysis shows how work-based solidarity as political activity is a temporary and precarious phenomenon. It necessitates constant engagement of various material and discursive elements to create its conditions. This article also shows how work-based solidarity is enabled through particular arrangements of activities stretching over both the socio-economic and the political sphere in a way that maintains the political mode of work distinct from socio-economic reasoning without ignoring its economic necessities.

scholarly journals Sentimental politics or structural injustice? The ambivalence of emotions for political responsibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Head
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
Institutional Boundaries ◽  
Affective Dimensions

AbstractStories and representations of suffering are frequently central to attempts to arouse our emotions and initiate political action. Yet, the evocation of emotion and, in particular, empathy, remains politically ambivalent. It does not necessarily lead to the acknowledgement of political responsibility or to actions to address the historically-constituted roots of contemporary structural injustices. Moving beyond the legal, moral, and institutional boundaries of political responsibility, this article argues for greater recognition of its affective dimensions. In particular, it differentiates between a sentimental politics and testimonial empathy to better understand the affective dynamics of political responsibility. While the former finds close company with pity and a lack of acknowledged political responsibility, the latter offers an ethical–political orientation towards radical reflexivity and social transformation, situating experiences of injustice within wider networks of power, privilege, and agency. Drawing on the work of feminist, cultural, and social theorists, the article offers a critical conceptualisation of testimonial empathy and its limits. The article illustrates the insights offered by re-thinking political responsibility in terms of testimonial empathy through a close reading of a historical account of structural injustice – slavery in the United States – as written in Harriet A. Jacobs’ 1861 slave narrative.

Home on Sunday, Home on Tuesday? Secular Political Participation in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-363
Author(s):  
Mark Brockway
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sharp Rise ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Religious Landscape

AbstractThe American religious landscape is transforming due to a sharp rise in the percentage of the population that is nonreligious. Political and demographic causes have been proffered but little attention has been paid to the current and potential political impact of these “nones,” especially given the established link between religion, participation, and party politics. I argue that the political impact of nonreligious Americans lies in an unexplored subset of the nonreligious population called committed seculars. Committed seculars de-identify with religion, they adopt secular beliefs, and join organizations structured on secular beliefs. Using a unique survey of a secular organization, the American Humanist Association, I demonstrate that committed seculars are extremely partisan and participatory, and are driven to participate by their ideological extremity in relation to the Democratic Party. These results point to a long-term mobilizing dimension for Democrats and indicate the potential polarizing influence of seculars in party politics.

scholarly journals The Iranian-American competition in Iraq: the political defeat of the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Nikolay Bobkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Scientific Hypothesis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Advantage ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

The article gives an assessment of Iran's policy in neighboring Iraq during the years of the American occupation. The author's scientific hypothesis is that after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran, and not America, became the real beneficiary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Iranian leadership, interested in changing the Baathist regime in Baghdad, having received such a strategic gift, did everything to use the US military presence to its advantage. The purpose of this study is to analyze the strategy of expanding Iran's influence in Iraq and its impact on US policy. The article shows that the nature of Iran's influence in Iraq included all the elements of state power: diplomatic, informational, military and economic. It is concluded that Tehran managed to take advantage of the democratic reforms in Iraq, which were carried out under the control of Washington. Iran used its Shiite henchmen, which gave it a political advantage over the United States, which did not have such influential allied forces in Iraq. Despite the disparate balance of military forces with America, Iran managed to avoid the risk of war with the United States and move on to achieving its long-term goals in Iraq. In the future, Tehran plans to achieve the rejection of Baghdad from constructive relations with Washington.

scholarly journals The Changes of Forms of Public Contestation in PostDemocracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-143
Author(s):  
Roman V. Savenkov
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Funding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Basic Institution ◽  
The Cost

The paper discusses the main trends in changing forms of political contestation of citizens in contemporary competitive and non-competitive political regimes. Social transformations led to the destruction of traditional social groups capable of joint political action. Along with social changes in the political sphere, the nature of the basic institution of political contestation - political parties - has changed, acting as political opposition. Contemporary political party reduces the scale of citizen involvement in political action, increasing the cost of political advertising, thereby becoming dependent on influential economic interest groups and state funding. The weakening of the political pressure of society through institutionalized channels led to the disappointment of the democratic system as a whole. Citizens in the contemporary world increasingly prefer noninstitutionalized and illegitimate forms of political action. However, observations of dispute practices in North Africa, the Middle East, Spain, the United States, France, and Russia in the 2010s demonstrate that the dominant position of institutional channels of influence on political and public decisions has been maintained. New opportunities of the Internet for organizing collective actions of citizens have not led to the formation of a new identity of dissatisfied people and the consolidation of effective online deliberation practices.

scholarly journals “THE FALL OF THE SECOND WALL”: THE NORMALIZATION OF RELATIONS BETWEEN CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES AND THE ROLE OF POPE FRANCIS

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Pablo A. Baisotti
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Relationship

The pastoral trips of Pope Francis to Cuba and to the United States were not only religious. The political activity that he organized to consolidate the relationship between the two recently reconciled countries was remarkable. Through visits, meetings and masses the Pope expressed his position and concerns about various arguments, beyond the recomposed Cuban-American relationship. During the trip he addressed subjects including the environment, poverty, family, union, freedom, all of which were themes that the Pontiff had clearly stated in his encyclical Laudato Si ‘(2015) and his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013). With this trip, Pope Francis ended up consolidating his status as a global politician as well as a pastor with a high degree of acceptance not only among Catholics.

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