Corporate Political Groupings: Does Ideology Unify Business Political Behavior?

Pluralists argue that corporations with different economic interests and market orientations are incapable of collective political strategy and actions, while class theorists argue that corporations have sufficient class interests to evolve a collective political class strategy. We examined this controversy using a variant of clique detection methods for business Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions to Congressional candidates in the 1980 election. One large group of corporations emerged based on shared conservative beliefs. No other groups nearly as large were detected. The findings were strong and robust for different levels of political similarity. The identified groups differed from each other economically in various ways, but these differences were not nearly as marked as the political differences. Overall, the evidence lends stronger support to the class rather than the pluralist perspective.