Business Ownership and Political Attitudes: Evidence from the GSS and ANES

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Abstract

While social scientists have paid great attention to the political power of corporate elites, non-elite business owners have been relatively unexamined. Insofar as we expect business ownership - independent of income and white-collar status – to shape political consciousness, small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs deserve further attention. In this paper, I build on neo-Marxist theories of social class to develop a theory of how political ideology varies with the “size of the capitalist. Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) and American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys, I find that business ownership is significantly associated with economic and social conservatism, independent of income and industry. Moreover, proprietors of mid-sized business appear to have the strongest association with conservative ideology.

Author

• Linroy Joseph Marshall, University of Michigan