Corporate lobbying and political contributions and their effects on tax avoidance

This study looks at the impact of U.S. lobbying and political contributions on taxes avoided by U.S. publicly traded corporations. Previous research provides mixed conclusions about the effects when examined separately. Looking at political contributions and lobbying contributions simultaneously displays the larger picture. I find that lobbying expenditures and political contributions both lead to lower future taxes, but those political contributions are more effective in reducing taxes paid from what would be expected given the federal statutory rate. This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides empirical evidence on the positive effects of lobbying contributions and political contributions on taxes avoided. Second, the results of this study are particularly useful for future research following the U.S. Citizens United ruling that affects corporate lobbying and political contributions. Third, differing from previous research, I build a simultaneous equation model to jointly determine the link among lobbying contributions, political contributions, and taxes avoided addressing the endogeneity issues of those relationships. These insights can help firms, policy makers, and public affairs researchers understand the connection between contributions and tax avoidance.     

Analysing political ideas and political action

Abstract

This paper examines the relevance of Boltanski and Thévenot's newly translated book, On justification, to the analysis of political ideas and political action. While situating the work of the authors within its initial intellectual context, namely the ‘economics of conventions’, it shows that one of the key contributions of the ‘sociology of justification’ lies in the answers it brings to two fundamental, as yet unresolved, questions in political science and political sociology: first, how is it possible to identify those ideas which are politically relevant? Second, how is it possible to capture the dynamics of public ideas? After outlining the sources of the quandaries faced within political science and political sociology as regards these two questions, the conceptual framework of Boltanski and Thévenot is presented and explained, and research perspectives suggested. This article argues that On justification provides a highly engaging, stimulating and empirically useful contribution to current debates in social and political theory around the dynamics of political arguments and ideas.     

Leader Incentives and Civil War Outcomes

This article examines the influence that rebel and state leaders have on civil war outcomes, arguing that incentives to avoid punishment influence their strategic decision making during war.  Leaders in civil war face punishment from two sources: internal audiences and opponents. I hypothesize that leaders who bear responsibility for involvement in the war have a higher expectation of punishment from both sources following unfavorable war performance, and thus, have incentives to continue the fight in the hope of turning the tide and avoiding the negative consequences of defeat. These incentives, in turn, make leaders who bear responsibility more likely to fight to an extreme outcome and less likely to make concessions to end the war.  These propositions are tested on an original data set identifying all rebel and state leaders in all civil conflict dyads ongoing between 1980 and 2011.  Results support the hypothesized relationships between leader responsibility and war outcomes.     

Incentives and the Natural Duties of Justice

In this paper I explore a possible response to G.A. Cohen's critique of the Rawlsian defence of inequality-generating incentives. Much of the debate on this topic has neglected the importance Rawls places on the principles that apply to individuals. I explore two possible strategies. First, to argue that self-seeking high-fliers fail to fulfil the natural duty to uphold justice; secondly, to argue that such individuals fail to fulfil the natural duty of mutual respect. These two strategies allow Rawlsians to argue that justice as fairness does require an ethos that is violated by the market behaviour of self-seeking high-fliers.     

A political genealogy of political economy

If, at the end of the eighteenth century, political economy became the prevailing representation of economic phenomena, this was due to the fact that, better than other economic or political discourses, it constructed a political framework in which three forces could co-exist. These forces were those that all the authors of this century tried to articulate: the state, capitalism, and those who tried to protect themselves from their power.     

Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives under Different Electoral Systems

In a seminal article, Cox (1990) suggested that electoral systems with larger district magnitudes provide incentives for parties to advocate more extreme policy positions. In this article, we put this proposition to the test. Informed by recent advances in spatial models of party competition, we introduce a design that embeds the effect of electoral rules in the utility function of voters. We then estimate the equilibrium location of parties as the weight voters attach to the expected distribution of seats and votes changes. Our model predicts that electoral rules affect large and small parties in different ways. We find centripetal effects only for parties that are favorably biased by electoral rules. By contrast, smaller parties see their vote share decline and are pushed toward more extreme equilibrium positions. Evidence from 13 parliamentary democracies supports model predictions. Along with testing the incentives provided by electoral rules, results carry implications for the strategies of vote‐maximizing parties and for the role of small parties in multiparty competition.     

Uncertainty and political participation

The minimax regret model of decision making under uncertainty, which was proposed by Ferejohn and Fiorina (1974) as a model of the voting decision, is here generalized to encompass forms of political participation (such as contributing money or time to a campaign) in which the range of alternatives is continuous. A principal implication of the model is that aggregate campaign contributions may be substantially increased by limiting the amount that any one individual can contribute. The conditions under which the behavior of a minimax regret decision maker can be unambiguously distinguished from that of an expected utility maximizer are also specified.     

Incentives for separation and incentives for public good provision

In this paper, I examine how the incentives of regions to unite and to separate are related to the incentives to provide public goods. Separation allows for greater influence over the nature of political decision making while unification allows regions to exploit economies of scale in the provision of public goods. From a social welfare perspective, there are excessive incentives for separation and for the provision of public goods. When incentives for public good provision are not taken into account, however, these incentives can be misinterpreted as incentives for separation.     

政治行为

指人们关于政治生活的各种活动，主要指可见的政治行为，如竞选、抗议、罢工、战争等。自从政治科学发生行为主义革命后，政治行为一度成为政治分析的出发点和核心内容。     

政治主体

即政治行为者。广义指所有的政治行为者。其相对的政治客体是政治行为赖以发生的政治环境。狭义指在政治过程中处于支配和主导地位的政治行为者．其相对的政治客体是其行为所涉及的被动的政治行为者。有些政治学家从法律的角度出发。把政治主体看作是政治权利和政治义务的承担者．认为只有那些被国家的法律赋予一定的政治权利和政治义务,并且实际地参与国家政治活动的人,才是政治主体。     

政治认同

人们在社会政治生活中产生的一种感情和意识上的归属感。它与人们的心理活动有密切的关系。人们在一定社会中生活．总要在一定的社会联系中确定自己的身份，如把自己看作是某一政党的党员、某一阶级的成员、某一政治过程的参与者或某一政治信念的追求者等等．并自觉地以组织及过程的要求来规范自己的政治行为。这种现象就是政治认同。     

政治参与

公民自愿地通过各种合法方式参与政治生活的行为。它反映公民在政治系统中政治活动的地位、作用和选择范围。     

政治制度

在特定社会中,统治阶级通过组织政权以实现其政治统治的原则和方式的总和。它包括一个国家的阶级本质,国家政权的组织形式和管理形式,国家结构形式和公民在国家生活中的地位。狭义主要指政体,即政权的组织形式。