The aim of this article is to study the suspect nature of private campaign finance, understood as the donors' hidden intentions and delayed exchange of reciprocities with incumbents. In particular, I explore whether electoral contributions from private corporations lead to political corruption. On the basis of a cross-national analysis, I find that, first, private financing reduces corruption because the use of this legal mechanism is enough to guarantee that the donors' interests will be achieved. Second, donors recognize that they have gained influence over policy outcomes, although in the spirit of the electoral laws this is not intended to occur. This increases corruption because incumbents use their positions of power to bend the rules and to adjust regulations and decisions in favor of their financial supporters. This paradox suggests law neutralization.

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Purpose This paper aims to study the roles of CEOs, board of directors and accounting/auditing firms in the adoption of tax avoidance schemas. Design/methodology/approach A cross-national analysis with data from 22 countries is used to examine the relationship between tax avoidance and the ethical qualities of the top leadership of the organizations, the firm’s profile and the tax/legal system characteristics. Findings The results show that the board of directors is the actor that contributes more to control tax avoidance cross-nationally, whereas the CEOs’ role to contend this practice is less relevant. The outcomes for accounting/auditing firms reveal that the stronger standards these firms have, the more tax avoidance is observed. Originality/value The methodology (cross-national analysis) and dimensions examined (role of the actors/instances of discretional power) in this inquiry offer a novel perspective to the analysis of tax avoidance, as most scholarly studies have taken a national approach and have mainly focused on studying the characteristics of the firms involved in tax avoidance.

Abstract:In this article I study why companies give electoral donations to support political leaders. I collected and used a unique data set on electoral financing at the corporate level in Colombia. The data show that firms consider electoral contributions to be 'legal bribes'. Consistent with the theory of bribery, these donations are made because of the low quality of election regulation, the high expectation of reciprocity, and the pre-existing relationships with incumbents. These features suggest 'legal neutralization': donors can break the law without committing crime.

This article reports the results of a nested analysis conducted to evaluate whether or not electoral donations are considered legal bribes. Introduced by Lieberman, nested analysis brings together the strengths of the regression analysis and the case study research by integrating large-N approaches (LNA) with small-N approaches (SNA). The nested analysis uses a sequential sampling model (QUANTITATIVE ! QUALITATIVE) and a nested sampling design (case selection ''on/off the line''). Here, Lieberman's original model was extended to deal with an apparent paradox that emerged from the analysis. This inquiry included a cross-national examination among 78 countries, denoted as LNA, followed by an intranational analysis conducted in Colombia, where an SNA survey with 302 respondents and an SNA case study were carried out.