The Effects of Institutions over Lobbying Strategies - A Comparative Analysis

• In Event: Poster Session: Representation and Electoral Systems and Poster Session: Political Organizations and Parties
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Organizations and Parties

Abstract

Research on institutions has focused on how formal and informal institutions structure agents behavior. Little is known about the effects on behavior when agents cope simultaneously heterogeneous institutional settings. In this paper, we explore this institutional duality by looking at corporate political behavior of foreign multinationals subsidiaries doing business in the United States. We investigate whether differences in subsidiaries political behavior are explained by differences in the political institutions of the home countries. We gathered all reports coming from the Lobbying Disclosure Act archives since 2004 until 2014 to map all the lobbying patterns inside the U.S. House committees. Based on more than 8,000 observations from 308 multinationals from 46 different countries our econometric results show that companies tend to be true to their home country institutions when deciding to engage in lobbying or not but the same is not true when they decide how much to spend with it. Also, the results indicate that companies coming from countries where the government plays a major role in the economy tend to spend more money in lobbying than those ones headquartered in countries where the government is not the responsible for the biggest share of national consumption.

Authors

• Arnaldo Mauerberg Junior, Insper and Getulio Vargas Foundation

• Rodrigo Bandeira de Mello

• Julio Canello, State University of Rio de Janeiro