Selling, Niels | 2019
Business and Politics
What determines whether or not firms lobby on the same policy issues? Scholars offer two broad answers to this question. Firms that are (1) similar or (2) connected through interorganizational ties target the same policy issues. In this article, I argue that the co-occurrence of these two conditions produces the opposite outcome, namely a tendency to lobby on different issues. This expectation draws on ideas from collective action theory and the literature on issue niches. From these, I derive the following assumptions: similar firms share political objectives and they should, when possible, act collectively by jointly delegating their lobbying activities. The reason for doing this is that it allows them to focus on their issue niches. However, the ability to delegate hinges on coordination and monitoring, which is facilitated by interorganizational relations. To test this proposition, I study the largest American corporations. The dependent variable is activity overlap, a measure of the extent to which firms lobby on the same issues. According to expectations, activity overlap is reduced when firms operate in the same industry and, simultaneously, enjoy favorable conditions for social interactions, such as a concentrated market structure. These results lend support to collective action theory.
