TY - JOUR
T1 - Business Interests and the Party Coalitions
T2 - Industry Sector Contributions to U.S. Congressional Campaigns
AU - Gimpel, James G.
AU - Lee, Frances E.
AU - Parrott, Michael
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The Hoover Institution at Stanford University provided generous financial support for this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2014.
PY - 2014/11/1
Y1 - 2014/11/1
N2 - We identify the economic interests in the United States that have a partisan alignment. We disaggregate corporate and trade association political action committees by economic sector, using the most fine-grained classifications available. We then analyze the campaign contributions to House incumbents from each sector, controlling for the majority party, economic geography, committee membership, and electoral competition. We find wide variation in how economic sectors relate to the parties. More than one third have a clear party tilt, with far more leaning toward Republicans than to Democrats. The remainder have no discernible partisan preference, either giving without reference to party or opportunistically to the majority. Republican-leaning sectors concentrate in particular enterprises, especially natural resources extraction, while most professional service sectors are nonpartisan. Business is not a monolith, to be contrasted with “labor” or “ideological interest groups,” but embedded in economic sectors that are more or less politicized in partisan terms.
AB - We identify the economic interests in the United States that have a partisan alignment. We disaggregate corporate and trade association political action committees by economic sector, using the most fine-grained classifications available. We then analyze the campaign contributions to House incumbents from each sector, controlling for the majority party, economic geography, committee membership, and electoral competition. We find wide variation in how economic sectors relate to the parties. More than one third have a clear party tilt, with far more leaning toward Republicans than to Democrats. The remainder have no discernible partisan preference, either giving without reference to party or opportunistically to the majority. Republican-leaning sectors concentrate in particular enterprises, especially natural resources extraction, while most professional service sectors are nonpartisan. Business is not a monolith, to be contrasted with “labor” or “ideological interest groups,” but embedded in economic sectors that are more or less politicized in partisan terms.
KW - business and politics
KW - campaign contributions
KW - corporate political strategy
KW - PACs
KW - party coalitions
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U2 - 10.1177/1532673X14525832
DO - 10.1177/1532673X14525832
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84907483683
SN - 1532-673X
VL - 42
SP - 1034
EP - 1076
JO - American Politics Research
JF - American Politics Research
IS - 6
ER -