Polarizers or landscape groomers? An empirical analysis of party donations by the 100 largest German companies in 1984–2005

Goerres, Achim; Höpner, Martin

doi:10.1093/ser/mwt027

Cited by 24 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…These scholars claim that more powerful social groups, like large corporations, prefer to directly promote their agendas by funding different political parties, rather than relying on election cycles. Goerres and Höpner (2014) also confirm empirically the argument that firms are politically pragmatic, providing econometric evidence that shows how automobile firms in Germany chose to distribute their donations to the entire political spectrum between 1984 and 2005. In a more recent paper, Tahoun and Vasvari (2016) report similar empirical findings concerning the political contributions of private financial institutions in the USA.…”

Section: Kalecki's Pbc As An Endogenous Crisis Theorysupporting

confidence: 65%

Class conflict, fiscal policy, and wage-led demand: A model of Kalecki’s Political Business Cycle

Gouzoulis

Constantine

2019

CJSSP

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This paper provides a demand-driven growth model of Kalecki's (1943) political business cycle. It incorporates the three fundamental assumptions that govern Kalecki's model: wage-led demand, the "reserve army of labor" effect, and capitalists' disproportionate power over fiscal policy. In our model, endogenous cycles are the outcome of capitalists' changing preferences over fiscal policy. Decreasing opposition to fiscal expansion by capitalists triggers the boom phase of the cycle, lest demand deficiency lead to a slowdown in accumulation. The downturn of the cycle is induced by capitalists' rising opposition to government spending, lest workers' growing political power at the peak of the cycle undermine their influence. This approach is unlike that taken by Goodwin and neoclassical PBC models, where a profit squeeze and the timing of elections or political ideologies determine cycles.

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Section: Kalecki's Pbc As An Endogenous Crisis Theorysupporting

confidence: 65%

Class conflict, fiscal policy, and wage-led demand: A model of Kalecki’s Political Business Cycle

Gouzoulis

Constantine

2019

CJSSP

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“…Nonetheless, they tend to favour centre-right parties (CDU/CSU and FDP, see also Polk, 2020). Although donations across the political spectrum have increased, family business owners in particular still stick to their political ideologies (Goerres & Höpner, 2014). This is relevant, as the policy preferences of the wealthy differ from those of the middle and working classes (Page et al, 2013), and politics tend to be more responsive to their interests (Bartels, 2016;Elsässer et al, 2021).…”

Section: Use Of Wealthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legitimate Wealth? How Wealthy Business Owners are Portrayed in the Press

Waitkus

Wallaschek

2022

Soc Just Res

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Germany has one of the highest levels of wealth concentration of any Western capitalist country. Research on the legitimization of economic inequality highlights that wealth elites tend to stress meritocratic arguments for legitimizing elite positions and wealth accumulation. However, whether this is also the case for wealthy business owners and how the media tends to portray those remains largely unknown. Drawing on a unique sample of 899 press articles from eight different media outlets between 2014 and 2018, we find a rather generous media debate. Based on descriptive evidence and a latent class analysis, we identify six latent frames illustrating how wealthy business owners are portrayed in the press. We show that the sources of wealth (inheritance, investment, entrepreneurship) are often used to highlight these owners’ deep economic relevance to the German economy, while the use of wealth is predominantly framed as a mean for profit-seeking. For wealthy business owners, moral evaluation of personal conduct is less present in the media and, when it is present, is rarely negative. Our study is the first analysis of press coverage of the wealthiest German business owners indicating a legitimizing media debate of high wealth concentration in an advanced capitalist society.

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“…For the years 1984 to 2005, Goerres and Höpner () analyze the party donation behavior of the 100 largest German companies and find that automobile firms and firms whose management team members are better connected to other firms are more likely to donate to parties. McMenamin () investigates political donations by firms in Australia, Canada, and Germany.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Donations to Political Parties: Investing Corporations and Consuming Individuals?

Fink¹

2017

Kyklos

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Summary What motivates donations to political parties? Two views prevail. Donors are perceived either as ideologically motivated consumers or as privilege‐seeking investors. To investigate differences in donor motivation between corporations and individuals, we analyze data from Germany. For the period from 1994 to 2014, we find that corporations act more like investors than individuals do. First, we test whether corporations or individuals are more inclined to give more to incumbent parties than to parties outside the governing coalition. Giving to incumbent parties whose representatives hold public offices may be more attractive for investing donors. Second, we test for differences between corporations and individuals in the relative increase in donations from non‐election years to election years. Investor donations may be more volatile than consumer donations. We find that only corporations donate more to incumbent parties and that corporations increase their party donations from non‐election years to election years more than individuals do. These differences in the behavior of corporate and individual donors provide some evidence for potentially undesirable exchanges between corporations as investors and parties. Further, the differences between individual and corporate donors tend to be more consistent for parties to the right on the political spectrum.

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Polarizers or landscape groomers? An empirical analysis of party donations by the 100 largest German companies in 1984–2005

Cited by 24 publications

References 29 publications

Class conflict, fiscal policy, and wage-led demand: A model of Kalecki’s Political Business Cycle

Class conflict, fiscal policy, and wage-led demand: A model of Kalecki’s Political Business Cycle

Legitimate Wealth? How Wealthy Business Owners are Portrayed in the Press

Donations to Political Parties: Investing Corporations and Consuming Individuals?

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