Li, Z., & Martin, G. J. Media and Intraparty Ideological Movements: How Fox News Built the Tea Party.. Forthcoming at the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy.
Abstract. Does media influence operate primarily on low-information swing voters, or can it also affect party activists who shape intraparty ideological factions? We examine Fox News' role in the rise of the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party, leveraging differences in its channel positions across cable systems to isolate exogenous variation in exposure to the channel (Martin and Yurukoglu 2017). In early 2009, Fox News did not noticeably boost Tea Party rally sizes. But later in the 2009-2010 cycle, exposure to the channel significantly increased campaign fundraising and primary election vote shares for Tea Party candidates compared to other Republican candidates. These findings dovetail with content analysis demonstrating pro-Tea Party slant on Fox News that emerged only in 2010. The Tea Party movement benefited from the backing of a powerful media outlet---a rare advantage among insurgent movements---which enabled it to rapidly move from the fringe to the center of the Republican Party.
Kim, S. S., & Li, Z. (in press). Keep Winning with WinRed? Digital Fundraising Platform as the Party’s Public Good Journal of Politics.
Abstract. What determines the relative importance of extended party networks versus party leaders in parties’ campaign strategies? We synthesize theories of party organizations by highlighting the interplay between formal institutions and extended networks, using an example from U.S. campaign finance. Online platforms are increasingly important in political fundraising, and party-wide platform coordination increases efficiency for any party. However, parties’ strategies sharply diverged: ActBlue for Democrats was created outside of and run independent of the party leadership, while WinRed for Republicans was created and controlled by party elites. We argue that asymmetries in the composition and incentives of extended party network members allowed ActBlue to grow organically but hindered natural coordination for Republicans. Analyses of platform communications and solicitation strategies show that, indeed, only the GOP actively intervened in members’ platform choices to overcome coordination failures. Matched-panel analysis proves the strategy effective; Republican candidates reaped sizable fundraising rewards from joining WinRed.
Li, Z. 2023. "When Do Campaign Donors Reject Extremists? Evidence from the U.S. Foreclosure Crisis." Journal of Politics 85(4): 1548-1561.
Abstract. Individual campaign donors offer reliable support for extremists in U.S. politics. Can such support waiver during economic crises, which often bolster extremists' popular appeals? Linking nationwide campaign finance and real estate transactions, I examine how the foreclosure crisis affected Republican donors’ willingness to donate to Tea Party candidates, an insurgent right-wing faction of the Republican party that opposed foreclosure relief. Individual-level longitudinal analyses demonstrate that Republican donors in distressed neighborhoods became less likely to contribute to Tea Party candidates, but continued to give to other, more mainstream, Republican candidates. The Tea Party movement's unsympathetic portrayal of underwater homeowners likely alienated Republican donors who witnessed neighbors of the same race as themselves suffering the plight of foreclosures. Despite the resulting fundraising losses, Tea Party candidates performed better in primary elections in crisis-stricken districts. These findings challenge long-standing claims about how the U.S. campaign finance system fuels polarization and extremism.
Li, Z., & DiSalvo, R. W. 2023. "Can Stakeholders Mobilize Businesses for the Protection of Democracy? Evidence from the U.S. Capitol Insurrection." American Political Science Review 117(3): 1130-1136.
Abstract. An unprecedented number of major U.S. companies announced changes to their campaign contributions following the Capitol insurrection on January 6th, 2021. We analyze the role of corporate stakeholders in these announcements as well as their implications for democratic institutions and business-government relations. Mirroring polarized public reactions to the Capitol insurrection, companies with more Democratic-leaning stakeholders (e.g., executives, employees, consumers) were more likely to publicly refuse contributing to Republican legislators who objected to the electoral college results. Moreover, these corporate pledges held up in available 2021 campaign finance records, implying potentially significant fundraising losses for said Republican legislators. Given increasing polarization and heightened expectations of the civic responsibility of businesses, the partisanship of corporate stakeholders may prove important in mobilizing businesses to protect democratic institutions (e.g., advocacy against voter restriction bills). However, such stakeholder pressure may also weaken businesses' bipartisan legislative coalitions and compel corporate influence-seeking activities to go dark.
Li, Z. 2018. "How Internal Constraints Shape Interest Group Activities: Evidence from Access-Seeking PACs." American Political Science Review 112(4):792--808.
Abstract. Interest groups contribute much less to campaigns than legally allowed. Consequently, prevailing theories infer these contributions must yield minimal returns. I argue constraints on PAC fundraising may also explain why interest groups give little. I illuminate one such constraint: access-seeking PACs rely on voluntary donations from affiliated individuals (e.g., employees), and these PACs alienate donors with partisan preferences when giving to the opposite party. First, difference-in-differences analysis of real giving shows donors withhold donations to access-seeking PACs when PACs contribute to out-partisan politicians. Next, an original survey of corporate PAC donors demonstrates they know how their PACs allocate contributions across parties, and replicates the observational study in an experiment. Donors' partisanship thus limits access-seeking PACs' fundraising and influence. This provides a new perspective on why there is little interest group money in elections, and has broad implications for how partisan preferences and other internal constraints shape interest group strategy.
Corporate Political Activities and Common Ownership: Mitigating Systemic Political Risks After January 6 (with Asher Lasday). Revision requested at Management Science.
Electing Allied Policy Entrepreneurs: Corporate Campaign Contributions and the Supply of New Legislation During the U.S. Fracking Revolution (with Richard W. DiSalvo).(email for current draft)
Abstract. Novel technologies often outpace existing regulatory frameworks, requiring policymakers to develop new legislation to address unanticipated externalities. We argue that this process is shaped upstream by electoral representation in communities most directly affected by technological adoption. Legislators from such districts are more likely to emerge as policy entrepreneurs by introducing legislation targeting adoption, while their partisan affiliations influence whether such legislation supports or constrains adoption. Firms may, in turn, indirectly shape the supply of new legislation by leveraging campaign contributions to influence electoral outcomes in these politically salient districts. We test this argument in the context of the U.S. fracking revolution, where rapid technological advances enabled large-scale and spatially concentrated expansion in commercial fracking since the mid-2000s. We show that state legislators representing districts with fracking development introduced more fracking-related legislation. In response, as fracking expanded exogenously in a district due to shale geology, fracking firms, coordinating statewide, directed substantially more campaign contributions to elections in those districts to help elect allied Republican candidates, particularly when the district had previously been represented by Democrat incumbents. Together, these findings demonstrate how spatially targeted, electorally motivated, and industry-coordinated corporate campaign contributions can indirectly shape the supply of new legislation governing the adoption of emerging technologies.
Balancing Regulatory and Sociopolitical Influence: How Employees Reshape Corporate Political Spending After the U.S. Capitol Insurrection (email for current draft)
Abstract. Corporate campaign contributions and other elections-related expenditures can facilitate firm lobbying and enhance performance. By strengthening the electoral and legislative positions of recipient politicians, however, such spending may also indirectly advance policymakers’ agendas on contentious sociopolitical issues beyond firms’ regulatory interests. We examine how employees shape firm responses to this tension. Focusing on the U.S. Capitol Insurrection on January 6th, 2021—when the sociopolitical implications of corporate political spending became unusually salient—we analyze changes in firms’ political spending in support of elected officials who sought to overturn the certification of the 2020 presidential election results (“Objectors”). Firms with stronger employee preference for pro-certification legislators significantly reduced campaign contributions to Objectors after the Insurrection. These reallocations imposed strategic costs by constraining firms’ ability to maintain lobbying access, especially to legislatively influential Objectors. Information serves as a key boundary condition: employee influence is attenuated when firms can shift pro-Objector political spending to less visible channels, unless firms have pre-existing commitments to transparent voluntary disclosures. Together, our findings highlight employees’ role in shaping how firms navigate the rising tension between maintaining regulatory influence and accounting for the sociopolitical implications of their political spending in polarized non-market environments.
Counterproductive Social Activism in a Polarized Market Exchange (with Tony He and Stanislav Markus; email for current draft).
Li, Z. 2023. "The Cost of Doing Politics: How Partisanship and Public Opinion Shape Corporate Influence by Jane L. Sumner." Political Science Quarterly 138(2): 321–323.
Li, Z., & DiSalvo, R. W. 2022. "Will Big Business Protect Democracy?" UC Institute of Global Conflict & Cooperation's Political Violence at a Glance Magazine, Nov 9.
Li, Z., & DiSalvo, R. W. 2022. "Stakeholder Activism Can Have a Big Influence on Corporate Political Donations." UC LSE USAPP United States Politics and Policy Blog, Dec 2.
Li, Z. 2021. "Game Changer: How Dark Money and Super PACs Are Transforming U.S. Campaigns, Henrik M. Schatzinger and Steven E. Martin." Political Science Quarterly 136(3): 580–581.
Li, Z. 2019. "Looking Inside the Black Box of Firms: A Proposal for A Research Agenda." The Political Economist 15(2): 17-19.
Inferring Candidates’ Issue-Specific Positions from Itemized Campaign Contributions Using Supervised Machine Learning (with A. Bonica)
Abstract. The Supreme Court upholds mandatory disclosure of itemized contributions as an important means to help voters place candidates on the political spectrum “more precisely than is often possible solely on the basis of party labels and campaign speeches” (Buckley v. Valeo). To assess the informational value of disclosure for democratic accountability, we apply supervised machine learning to predict candidates' issue-specific positions based on itemized contributions they received prior to entering Congress. Our models accurately distinguish candidates on different issues both within and across parties, generally outperforming predictions based on DW-NOMINATE scores. Moreover, leveraging only non-incumbent fundraising records, our algorithms can impute issue scores for candidates lacking office-holding experiences. We also identify donors that provide the most marginal information on candidates' policy stances. Itemized contributions can facilitate voters' discernment of candidates on issues of interest, and are uniquely valuable for differentiating co-partisan candidates in the absence of legislative records.
Lemons in the Political Marketplace: A Big-Data Approach to Detect ‘Scam PACs’ (email for current draft)
Abstract. ‘Scam PACs’ are political action committees (PACs) in the United States that raise campaign contributions to enrich their creators (e.g., political consultants) instead of advancing the campaigns or causes they purport to champion. In the 2018 election cycle alone alleged scam PACs collectively raised more than $106 million, which could have fully funded 140 average House campaigns. Scam PACs’ proliferation and lack of regulatory oversight not only undermine PACs’ accountability to donors, but also generate a lemons problem in the political marketplace. To reduce the information asymmetry that donors face in discerning scam PACs, I first examine how scam PACs that have been identified by media reports differ from comparable legitimate PACs on aggregate attributes related to their solicitation strategies, fundraising and expenditure patterns, regulatory compliance, donor characteristics, and PAC donor and personnel networks. Building on these descriptive analyses, I construct a supervised machine learning algorithm that systematically detects scam PACs in U.S. federal elections.