Despite extensive research on political activity on the part of corporations, clear and consistent findings remain elusive. We identify three reasons for this failure. First, most of the empirical literature on corporate political activity simply studies the wrong phenomena by examining political action committees rather than lobbying more generally. Second, the literature studies an excessively narrow sample of organizations that might engage in lobbying, focusing almost always on extremely large corporations, which inevitably attenuates variance on many of the variables hypothesized to influence engagement in political activity. And third, prior work is rarely attentive to the diversity of corporate activities, narrowly conceptualizing vital aspects of the business context that might influence decisions to engage in political activity. Based on this critique, we develop and test new models of corporate political activity, finding that the diversity of the economic context within which firms work and firm size matter a great deal, if in ways somewhat different from those reported in prior work.

Why do some countries institutionalize a social program compensating the unemployed while others do not? My main argument is that the choice to have an unemployment insurance program is a function of 1) the distribution of unemployment risks within a country and 2) political processes through which demands for insurance are realized. The distribution of industrial-specific risks and workers' employment status are the driving force in shaping workers' demands. In developing countries, these demands are more likely to be realized under democratic regimes. An event history model for 102 developing countries from 1946 to 2000 is used to test the arguments.

This paper examines the motivation and impact of corporate diversification in Chinese listed firms. We find that in local government owned-firms there is a non-linear relationship between the level of firm diversification and state ownership. As state ownership increases from zero, the level of diversification decreases. After state ownership reaches a certain level, the level of diversification increases as state ownership increases. There is no evidence that ownership is related to corporate diversification in non-state-owned firms or central government-owned firms. We also document that diversification is negatively related to firm performance in local government-owned firms. However, there is no evidence that diversification is negatively related to the firm performance in non-state-owned firms or central government-owned firms. Our findings suggest that agency problems are responsible for local government owned-firms taking value-reducing diversification strategies.

Democratic consolidation was the top priority of re-democratized Argentina and Brazil. Regional integration was also part of this goal from two perspectives: from the outside, through a treaty that diminished the scope for political manoeuvring by the military and increased international support for the incumbent administrations, and; from within, through encouragement of a proactive role for business in integration that would give it democratic legitimacy, while, at the same time, exercising democratic practices. Argentine and Brazilian political classes expected to combine these two aspects but soon had to face business reluctance. Government-business relations in the construction of Mercosur reflected government attempts to balance the trade-off between the approaches from without and from within. Although business was largely excluded from the strategic formulation of integration, in a democratic context, governments have to accommodate societal interests. This occurred through a significant overlap between powerful business interests and the executive's plans. The achievement of integration helped consolidate democracy and the choices made by political elites drove forward the democratic process.