In principle, voting is the mechanism by which citizen preferences translate into representatives’ action. If our theoretical expectations hold anywhere, we expect that it would be in a politically consequential setting such as elections. We address this possibility in Chapter 8 by analyzing a wealth of data on candidates and voting in state legislative elections as well as interest groups’ campaign donation and lobbying activity. We find that transparency laws do not improve the electoral chances of challengers. When a state opens its meetings, the pool of candidates does not change and incumbents’ vote share is barely affected. In contrast, the picture does change significantly for interest groups. We find that, in open meetings states, these groups’ donations to incumbents increase by substantial amounts while their contributions to challengers remain basically the same. Additionally, the size of the organized interest community is notably larger when a state holds open meetings. In short, an unintended consequence of transparency is that it facilitates interest groups’ capacity to seek access through elections and lobby state governments to achieve their policy goals.

In this chapter, I test whether concerns about public backlash actually translate into changes in corporate political behavior. The theory suggests that companies that are worried their political advocacy might get them into hot water with the public and thereby imperil their reputation and brand ought to take one of two broad strategies: either hide their political behavior or take steps to make the activity more palatable to the public. I test this using federal campaign contributions and lobbying data. The evidence suggests that both campaign contributions through PACs that share the company’s name and direct lobbying at the federal level are relatively rare and that companies that cite concerns about social media and reputation damage in their 10-Ks are less likely to engage. Having demonstrated that these companies are less likely to do these things raises the question of what, if anything, they are doing instead, which I address using interviews. I find strong evidence that companies take concerted steps to both hide their political advocacy and somewhat weaker evidence that they try to make it more palatable.

In this chapter, I explain how fear of a public backlash shapes how companies engage in the political system. I outline a probabilistic chain of events that can lead from a company engaging in advocacy to being noticed and criticized by activists, to that criticism spurring a larger public response, to eventual damage to a company’s brand and reputation. Certain attributes of companies and advocacy strategies change the probability of each of these events happening, which means that (a) some companies are inherently more vulnerable than others and (b) companies can take intentional steps to reduce these probabilities in order to engage in advocacy while skirting damage. This chapter produces a set of expectations I test in the remainder of the book – that public backlash to corporate advocacy is a form of political speech and signaling rather than a statement about consumer behavior; that companies fear this backlash and “boycotts” primarily because of fear of brand damage, not necessarily sales; and that companies engage in particular strategies to either hide their political advocacy or defuse the public anger over it.