Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article reconciles conflicting views about the political landscape of corporate America with new data on the revealed political preferences of 97,469 corporate directors and executives at 9,005 different U.S. companies. I find that average ideology for these individuals has shifted meaningfully to the left over time, changing from modestly conservative in 2001 to roughly centrist by 2022. This finding supports a middle-ground position between conventional wisdom casting "big business" as a conservative stronghold and revisionist views holding the opposite. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences design suggest multifaceted causes for these changes, and hand-collected data on corporate stances on LGBTQ-related legislation coupled with an instrumental variables design indicate that individual ideology has large effects on firm-level political activity. Overall, this transformation has profound implications for American politics, as the individuals comprising one of the most powerful interest groups—corporate elites—appear to be fracturing ideologically and to some degree even switching sides.
Author: REILLY S. STEEL
Institution: Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
Funder: Princeton University
OpenAlex ID: W4414557229