1. No category

LABORATORY ON INTERNATIONAL
LAW AND REGULATION
ILAR Working Paper
#24
April 2015
The Corporate Human Rights Lobby
EMILIE M. HAFNER-BURTON and HEIDI M. MCNAMARA
About the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation
(ILAR)
The Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR) is an international, interdisciplinary
laboratory that explores when and why international laws actually work. Among scholars, this
question has triggered a lively debate that ILAR is engaging with better theories and evidence.
ILAR research examines a wide array of issues from environment and energy to human rights,
trade and security issues. The ILAR team looks at these issues from the international perspective
and also through comparisons across countries.
The Laboratory is part of School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at University of
California, San Diego. ILAR gratefully acknowledges anchor funding from the nonpartisan
Electric Power Research Institute, BP, plc, the Norwegian Research Foundation and from UC
San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies.
Laboratory on International Law and Regulation
School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0519
http://ilar.ucsd.edu
2
About the Authors
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is professor at IR/PS and director of the School's International Law
and Regulation Laboratory. Most recently, Hafner-Burton served as professor of politics and
public policy at Princeton University, where she held joint appointments in the Department of
Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. She also served as
research scholar at Stanford Law School and fellow of Stanford's Center for International
Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Previously, she was postdoctoral prize research fellow at
Nuffield College at Oxford University, recipient of MacArthur fellowships at Stanford's CISAC
and affiliate at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford
University. Hafner-Burton's research at Oxford, Stanford and Princeton examined ways to
improve protections for human rights, the design of international and regional trade policy, and a
wide array of other topics related to the use of economic sanctions, social network analysis and
international law.
3
The Corporate Human Rights Lobby
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Heidi M. McNamara
University of California, San Diego
April 16, 2015
Abstract: This paper systematically explains variation in Congressional lobbying on human
rights foreign policy. Drawing upon a unique dataset that details congressional lobbying activity
from 2007-2010, we demonstrate that there is a clear hierarchy to spending on human rights. It is
the big economic interests in the US, not labor groups or human rights organizations, which account
for the majority of lobbying on human rights issues. Moreover, it is firms predominantly in
manufacturing sectors with strong economic ties to human rights abusing countries that are most
active. Many of these firms have economic interests that are at odds with what might be considered
humanitarian aspirations. They represent a narrow, conservative-leaning range of ideological
perspectives that do not mirror the preferences of the American public or of most other interest
groups.
Working draft. Please do not distribute without the authors’ permission.
4
Since at least the 1970s, human rights have been an important part of the congressionally
determined policy agenda. Since that time, Congress has required the US Department of State to
submit annual reports on the human rights practices of all countries that receive assistance or are
members of the United Nations (U.S. Department of State 2015). These reports inform
congressional decisions on issues as wide-ranging as trade, foreign aid and security policy. Alongside
these reports is another source of information that could also, in principle, influence congressional
decision making: lobbying by special interest groups (Baumgartner et al. 2009; Bombardini 2008;
Marceau and Smart 2003; Truman 1951).1
Until recently scholars have focused almost exclusively on efforts to influence Congressional
policy through political action committee (PAC) contributions (e.g., Fleisher 1993; Grier and
Munger 1993; Milyo, Primo, and Groseclose 2000).2 Yet in fact, lobbying expenditures far outweigh
PAC contributions (Apollonio 2005; Hafner-Burton, Kousser, and Victor 2014) and lobbying allows
for much greater latitude in targeting spending on actual legislative activities. Between 2007 and
2010, special interests spent over 100 million dollars lobbying human rights legislation before
Congress. This flow of private money into the Congressional human rights policymaking process
raises important questions about which interest groups seek political influence and whether, on
balance, their interests lie in promoting or deterring human rights legislation.3
This paper is the first effort (to our knowledge) to systematically explain variation in
Congressional lobbying on human rights policy. Drawing upon a unique dataset compiled by
Hafner-Burton, Kousser, and Victor (2014) that details all congressional lobbying activity from
While lobbying campaigns are not automatically successful, when lobbyists are successful (about 40 percent of the time
according to Baumgartner et al. (2009), they win significant policy changes.
2 Some notable exceptions include Ansolabehere, Figueiredo, and Jr. 2003; Bombardini 2008; Bombardini and Trebbi
2012; Brasher and Lowery 2006; Drope and Hansen 2006; Hansen and Mitchell 2000; Kim 2012; Ludema, Mayda, and
Mishra 2010.
Much of US foreign policy in other domains, including foreign aid, is driven by strategic geopolitical concerns, rather
than normative peace-building and development considerations (Alesina and Dollar 2000; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith
2007; McKinley and Little 1979; Neumayer 2003).
1
3
5
2007-2010, we demonstrate that there is a clear hierarchy to spending on human rights. It is the big
economic interests in the US, not labor groups or human rights organizations, which account for the
majority—nearly 65 percent—of all lobbying on the issue. Moreover, it is firms predominantly in
manufacturing sectors with strong economic ties to human rights abusing countries that most
actively lobby Congress on rights-related legislation. They represent a narrow, conservative-leaning
range of ideological perspectives that do not mirror the preferences of the American public more
broadly.
These findings have significant implications for debates in both international relations and
American politics. It has long been thought that firms exert a significant influence on trade and
economic policy (Grossman and Helpman 1994; Jacobs and Page 2005; Keohane and Milner 1996;
Koh 2011; Lowery 2007; Milner 1997; Nownes 2012; Rogowski 1987). Recent work examining trade
lobbying shows that nearly all industries weigh in at different times (Bombardini and Trebbi 2012;
Brasher and Lowery 2006; Drope and Hansen 2006; Kim 2013; Plouffe 2012). Firms also influence
human rights (Mosley 2011; Mosley 2008; Mosley and Uno 2007; Ruggie 2013). However, this paper
suggests that a much narrower swath of corporate interests attempts to influence the policymaking
process by infusing millions of dollars into Congress. Our research thus speaks to debates in the
American politics literature about the representativeness and responsiveness of government (Bartels
2008; Gilens 2005; Schlozman 1984; Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 1995), and the worry that an
“unheavenly chorus” of wealthy interest groups biases policy outcomes (Schattschneider 1960;
Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012; Drutman 2015). The domination of human rights lobbying by
select corporate actors raises serious concerns about the representativeness (or lack thereof) of these
interests with respect to the broader US populace.
We develop the paper in five sections. We begin with descriptive evidence of the types of
actors that make up the human rights lobby and demonstrate empirically that a narrow range of
6
firms account for most of the money. Next, we develop our central argument that certain types of
firms—namely those with substantial economic ties to human rights abusing states—have a
particular interest in lobbying Congress on human rights legislation. We then evaluate the argument
using lobbying disclosure data, speculate (though cannot conclusively determine) whether firms’
lobbying intent may on balance be to promote or deter human rights-related legislation, and finally,
conclude.
The Human Rights Lobby
The human rights lobby is slanted toward corporate interests. Of the 101 million dollars
spent by interest groups lobbying Congress on rights between 2007 and 2010, firms spent nearly 65
percent, far outspending labor unions or human rights organizations. We thus focus our discussion
on firms and draw upon a new dataset collected by Hafner-Burton, Kousser, and Victor (2014)
which combines firm lobbying activity and other firm attributes in order to determine the range of
corporate interests seeking influence Congressional policy.
The authors purchased data on lobbying filings and campaign contributions (all public
record, but typically available in separate documents for each of the many hundreds of thousands of
quarterly filings) from the now-defunct “First Street.” Using the Congressional Research Service’s
(CRS) subject codes for bills, they narrowed the dataset to include only lobbying dollars spent on
foreign policy bills. The CRS tags most bills with multiple codes, signifying the issue areas to which
they relate. The codes are of two varieties—issue areas, such as “Foreign Relations” and
“Telecommunications,” and proper nouns, such as “Indonesia.” To narrow the dataset, they first
eliminated all proper noun CRS codes and then, for each bill, divided the number of foreign policyrelated codes by the total number of codes with which the bill was tagged. This produced a foreign
policy factor for each bill, which was used to calculate an estimate of the amount spent lobbying on
foreign policy in each filing. Each filing amount was divided by the number of bills listed in the
7
filing and multiplied each foreign policy factor by its bill’s proportion of the lobbying amount to
estimate the amount spent lobbying foreign policy issues. Bills with a foreign policy factor under
0.10 were considered unrelated to foreign policy. For a more in-depth discussion of this coding
process and the logic behind specific decisions, see Hafner-Burton, Kousser, and Victor (2014).
Relying on CRS codes from within the broad subject of “foreign policy” we selected the bills
relating specifically to human rights. We excluded appropriations legislation because many are
omnibus bills that fund a wide variety of governmental endeavors. Lobbying on an appropriations
bill with human rights implications cannot be interpreted as a sign that the lobbyer has human rights
concerns. One such example is the “Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2010 and
2011.” This bill undoubtedly includes some funding for human rights projects; however; the subject
matter of the legislation is too broad for it to be useful for our analysis here. Additionally, using
content analysis of each bill we identified and excluded the rare remaining bills that were clearly not
about foreign relations or human rights. For example, the “Inclusive Home Design Act of 2009”
required new homes built in the United States to meet minimum standards for accessibility for
persons with disabilities, but did not impact U.S. foreign human rights policy. This process gives us a
conservative estimate of lobbying expenditures on human rights bills at the firm level.
We then coded all of the bills tagged “human rights” by the CRS into a handful of
subcategories. This coding was done by hand, examining each bill’s title, description, and, if
necessary, full text to accurately place it in one of four subcategories. The first subcategory is what
we consider “direct” human rights policy. These bills are explicitly related to human rights concerns
and make concrete changes to US policy. An example of a direct bill is the “Convention Against
Torture Implementation Act,” which instructs the Secretary of State to submit to the appropriate
congressional committees an annual list of countries where torture is known to occur and prohibits
the transfer of people by the United States to these countries where there are grounds for believing a
8
person would be in danger of torture if transferred. There are 193 of these bills in our dataset and
they account for 55.4 million dollars—or roughly half—of all human rights-related lobbying
between 2007 and 2010. Lobbying on these bills makes up the “direct” human rights dependent
variable used in our analyses.
The second subcategory includes bills that are primarily about military issues that have
human rights implications. An example of a “military” bill is the “9/11 Recommendations
Implementation Act,” which reforms the intelligence community, border security, and terrorist
prevention and prosecution efforts. Among other provisions the bill directs the State Department to
increase incentives for Foreign Service officers to take assignments relating to the protection of
human rights, reaffirms the United States’ role as a moral leader for democratic principles, and
strengthens law enforcement mandates to address human trafficking. There are 19 military-related
human rights bills in our dataset and they account for 22.7 million dollars in lobbying.
The third subcategory concerns international economic bills with human rights implications.
For example, the “Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement
Implementation Act” primarily concerns free trade issues but has implications for human rights and
particularly workers’ rights in Central America. Specifically, the act would bring into force a trade
agreement with special provisions to afford to workers internationally recognized human rights,
including a review of the Dominican Republic’s domestic human rights legislation and the provision
of technical assistance to improve working conditions.4 There are 18 of these trade-related human
rights bills, which account for 7.9 million dollars in lobbying expenditures. These first three
categories concern concrete human rights policy legislation. Combined, they make up the “broad”
human rights policy dependent variable analyzed below. In total, there are 230 bills in this broad
Worker rights provisions are a contentious topic in contemporary trade policy. Some versions of this legislation include
these human rights-related provisions, while others do not. For a more detailed discussion of the legislative contention
surrounding workers’ rights conditions in free trade agreements see Assistant United States Trade Representative for
Labor William Clatanoff’s remarks (Clatanoff 2005).
4
9
human rights policy category and they account for 86.1 million dollars in lobbying expenditures
between 2007 and 2010.
A fourth—and smaller—subcategory contains all of the bills and resolutions considered by
Congress that make no concrete changes to US policy but take a clear position on a human rights
issue. Most of these bills are nonbinding resolutions supporting an ideological position that may
hold significant symbolic power in international and domestic communities, but do not directly
impact US law. For example, House Resolution 252 in the 111th Congress affirmed the existence of
the Armenian Genocide; however, it did not dictate specific actions that the United States must take
against Turkey. There are 123 symbolic human rights bills in our dataset. They account for 15.2
million dollars in lobbying between 2007 and 2010. This subcategory is the “symbolic” human rights
dependent variable discussed below. Figure 1 provides a visual representation of the proportion of
lobbying on bills in our dataset by each subcategory.
FIGURE 1
In addition to data on lobbying activity, we compiled information on individual firms’
attributes drawn from census reports, academic studies, and a widely used database of public firmlevel financial information (Compustat). These data allow us to identify the particular types of firms
that lobby on human rights. Figure 2 breaks down these expenditures by sector. We separate firms
into two-digit sectors based on the North American Industry Classification System. These broad
categories place every industry in the American economy into 23 distinct sectors.
FIGURE 2
Figure 2 illustrates that a narrow range of sectors dominates human rights lobbying. Between
2007 and 2010, nearly 85 percent of all corporate lobbying expenditures—and thus the majority of
any lobbying—on human rights policy bills was spent by five sectors: Information, Holding
Companies, Metal and Electronic Manufacturing, Mining/Oil/Gas, and Petrochemical
10
Manufacturing. This monopolization of human rights lobbying primarily by manufacturing
companies is even more exaggerated in some years. For instance, in 2010, those same five sectors
were responsible for 97 percent of all corporate-sponsored human rights lobbying. Publicly traded
firms spent the vast majority of this money.
Who exactly are these firms that spend hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of
dollars every year trying to influence Congressional human rights policy? Table 1 highlights the top
twenty public firms that lobbied human rights policy in 2010. All but two are from the five main
sectors identified above. They are primarily large multinational firms with a broad array of economic
interests. There is a great deal of variation in how much they spend in any given year;
Conocophillips alone is responsible for more than one-fifth of all human rights lobbying
expenditures by public firms in 2010. Much of their lobbying activity that year focused on H.R.
2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010. This
legislation had direct human rights implications for the Middle East and terror targets globally by
directing the President to “take measures to respond to violations of human rights and religious
freedom in Iran” and increasing economic sanctions against the Iranian government (United States
Congress 2010). These sanctions will be automatically revoked if the President certifies to Congress
that Iran has released all political prisoners and detainees; ceased its practices of violence and abuse
of Iranian citizens engaging in peaceful political activity; conducted a transparent investigation into
the killings and abuse of peaceful political activists and prosecuted those responsible; and made
progress toward establishing an independent judiciary. By sanctioning the exportation and
production of petroleum, this legislation threatened Conocophillips’ ability to develop oil extraction
capacities in Iran. By conditioning the restrictions on commerce on Iran’s human rights record,
Congress made human rights relevant to petroleum extracting firms, such as Conocophillips, and
11
their economic prospects. Though we do not know the nature of Conocophillips’ lobbying activity
on this bill, they have a clear economic incentive to resist sanctions against Iran.
TABLE 1
We have thus far established that large publicly traded multinational firms from a select
group of sectors—primarily manufacturing and extractive industries—spend many millions of
dollars each year in an effort to influence Congressional human rights legislation, and they far
outspend all other interest groups. Having briefly explored the landscape of human rights lobbyists,
we now turn our attention toward explaining why it is these specific firms that so consistently lobby
human rights policy.
The Argument
Since most firms are not centrally in the business of promoting human rights, why would
they lobby on rights-related legislation? Our central argument is that—while there are a great many
reasons firms lobby—congressional human rights policy is likely to produce particular incentives to
lobby when firms’ economic interests are intertwined with human rights abusing states. Firms lobby
in an effort to further their own—and often their industry’s—economic interests. Since we observe
human rights lobbying predominantly from a handful of sectors, it follows that there must be
something unique about the economic interests of these sectors that prompts their attentiveness to
human rights foreign policy. Yet the economic implications of any given human rights policy could
be either beneficial or harmful to firms, depending in part on the type of legislation in question and
the nature of the business or industry.
Some legislation clearly produces economic benefits for companies. The Enhanced
Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 is one example. Included in the bill’s plan for building a better
relationship between the United States and Pakistan are stipulations enhancing the lives of women
and children, supporting education and public health, encouraging democratization and reinforcing
12
the rule of law—all components of a broader human rights agenda. The Act authorized 7.5 billion
dollars in non-military aid to Pakistan to support these goals. In return, Pakistani President Asif Ali
Zardari agreed to take action against terrorist militants harbored within Pakistan. This bill had
substantial economic implications for US defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and
Raytheon. It not only authorized funding for contracts they were qualified to fill—such as for
improved border security systems—but it also strengthened relations between the United States and
the Pakistani government, making Pakistan a more amenable market for American products. This
improved relationship led to the state-owned Pakistan International Airlines signing a multi-billion
dollar contract for 777-330ER airplanes with Boeing. Boeing’s lobbying on this bill was motivated
by their belief that the creation of public-private capacity-building initiatives, such as those outlined
by this legislation, would offer financial benefits (U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S.-Pakistan
Business Council 2009).
Firms may also be the target of public shaming, and even consumer boycotts, for human
rights violations committed in their global supply chains in overseas facilities (Spar 1998). In 2012
for example, Apple was publicly criticized for the harsh labor conditions in its Chinese-based
factories, where workers who assembled iPads and other devices toiled in inhumane conditions
(Duhigg and Barboza 2012). In response, Apple began a public campaign in support of “supplier
responsibility” to treat workers with dignity and respect (Apple 2015). In principle, firms trading in
goods easily associated with public shaming campaigns may choose to lobby on human rights
legislation as a way to signal their support for human rights and allay a negative consumer response.
This signal is likely muted, however, by the fact that interest groups are not legally required to
publically disclose their lobbying positions. Most firms do not advertise their lobbying efforts
beyond the basic requirement by federal law to report contributions. And of course firms may
13
launch public relations campaigns that appear pro-human rights while at the very same time privately
lobbying Congress against human rights legislation.
Firms may also lobby in an effort to improve the stability of their overseas trade and
investment relationships or to create new, secure markets for selling or manufacturing their
products. Human rights violations—especially if they are systemic and political in nature—can
destabilize local governance systems and generate uncertainty for companies that seek to trade or
invest (Hafner-Burton 2005; Poe and Tate 1994). In Myanmar, for example, recent outbreaks of
communal violence have inhibited tourism and foreign investment, both of which have sharply
declined in growth since the country began opening to the West in 2010. A similar fate struck Sudan,
as foreign companies that are a key source of financing for the country have become skittish to
invest in the face of massive economic and political instability.
By contrast, certain types of human rights violations can benefit firms by creating a “race to
the bottom” in standards that create access to cheap inputs and labor (Vogel and Kagan 2004;
Drezner 2006). Denying workers their freedom of association or the right to collective bargaining or
supporting conditions that require them to work extreme hours in hazardous conditions are
practices that can reduce the costs of manufacturing products or services that American firms rely
upon in their production or extraction chains. Such conditions, in turn, can motivate corporate
demand for trade with nations that permit violations of internationally recognized rights. It is no
accident that Apple chose to outsource the assembly of its devices overseas to Chinese factories
where the costs of labor are much lower than in the US, boosting the marginal returns to the
company. Large public companies the likes of Walt Disney, Nike and Reebok have similarly been
exposed for relying upon underage and underpaid workers in foreign countries to minimize their
costs (Spar 1998). US legislation that seeks to improve these conditions—such as the labor
protections clause associated with America’s recent slate of free trade agreements—have thus been
14
the source of a great deal of lobbying by US firms seeking to remove, or water down, the human
rights provisions that may affect their bottom line (Hafner-Burton 2009).
The Global Online Freedom Act is one example of a bill that companies actively sought to
fight out of concern for its effects on their ability to conduct future business. While collaborating
with countries such as China and Iran to censor Internet searches, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!
lobbied to kill this Act which would have made it US policy to promote the freedom to seek,
receive, and impart information and ideas through any media, as well as deter US businesses from
cooperating with Internet-restricting countries.5 The free flow of information on the Internet has
become a critical tool used by human rights activists in recent years to disseminate information.
Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have been used to mobilize protestors
and warn civilians of violence. Censoring the Internet has thus become a prominent strategy of
oppressive regimes. By supporting a free and open Internet, this legislation would have made it
illegal for US companies to share personal user information with Internet-restricting countries, and
by doing so threaten the agreements that companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! made
with certain repressive governments.
Chevron provides another example. Chevron has consistently lobbied on issues relating to
“Litigation in Ecuador pertaining to environmental cleanup and joint venture with Ecuadorian stateowned oil company” (Chevron 2010). In this case, Chevron has appealed to Congress to support
their refusal to continue to clean up the substantial environmental degradation caused by the
Amazonian Lago Agrio oil fields, with deleterious implications for the human rights of local
inhabitants. According to the New York Times, much of this lobbying was intended to pressure the
U.S. to revoke Ecuador’s trade preferences, “on the grounds that [Ecuador] broke its agreement to
absolve the oil company of liability” (Romero and Krauss 2009). Though it took until their standing
5
We infer intent to kill legislation from news reports citing the companies change in position: Mark (2010); Hart (2010).
15
agreement expired for Ecuador to lose their trade preferences, lobbying pressure from Chevron
paved the way for this change in U.S. foreign policy. Chevron lobbied to kill this legislation because
they sought economic benefits associated with doing business where environmental standards are
lax, and wages are low.
These examples illustrate some of the various ways in which economic interests in human
rights abusing states drive corporations to lobby—either in support of, or against—human rights
legislation. Regardless of the actual humanitarian implications of their preferences, we expect that
firms with trade and investment ties to rights-abusing states will anticipate the potential effects of
human rights legislation on their business and thus have stronger incentives to lobby Congress for
influence. Specifically, we expect—Hypothesis 1—to find a positive relationship between lobbying on
human rights policy and the interaction between the total dollar amounts of trade a firm conducts
with human rights abusing countries and the percent of that firm’s trade that is conducted with such
countries. Firms that trade large dollar amounts with human rights abusers, but whose trade with
non-abusers far overshadows trade with abusers, should not be as invested in protecting relations
with rights-abusing countries. Furthermore, firms that trade mainly with abusers, but that do not
trade very much, will have few economic resources with which to lobby. It is therefore the
combination of these two factors that will lead to a higher share of lobbying on human rights policy.
Firms must trade a lot and much of that trade must be with human rights abusing states in order for
there to be large enough incentives—and resources—to overcome the challenges to lobbying.
A similar relationship should also be evident in firms’ foreign direct investment (FDI)
patterns.6 Specifically, we expect—Hypothesis 2—that firms with a substantial portfolio of foreign
investments, where a large portion of that investment is in human rights abusing states, will have
greater resources and incentives to lobby human rights policy.
6
On investment and human rights more generally, see Mosley (2011).
16
Our theory explicitly connects lobbying activity on human rights policy to firms’ trade and
investment behavior. However, not all human rights legislation will equally affect a firm’s economic
interests. By our definition, symbolic legislation should have less effect than legislation that would
actually change American law. Though potentially politically controversial, congressional resolutions
do not hold any binding power to restrict foreign trade or investment. We thus expect—Hypothesis
3—that a firm’s trade relations and FDI patterns will be much weaker predictors of lobbying on
symbolic measures than on broad or direct policy.
While our central argument is focused on overseas economic relationships, trade and
investment behavior is certainly not the only determinant of a firm’s inclination or ability to lobby
(Bombardini 2008; Kim 2013). It is well established that there are primary costs to any lobbying,
including the dollar amount spent to influence any given piece of legislation and the upfront costs to
establishing a lobbying presence, which creates barriers to entry and economies of scale (Kerr,
Lincoln, and Mishra 2014). The benefits of lobbying and other forms of political action spending
depend on many factors. While there is a substantial literature on lobbying, recognized among the
most important factors are firm size and the capacity to solve the collective action problem
associated with lobbying (Hansen and Mitchell 2000).7 We are mindful in our empirical analysis that
both may also influence a firm’s decision to lobby human rights.
Firms that lobby are likely to be large both within their particular sector and within the
global market (Hafner-Burton, Kousser, and Victor 2014). Larger firms may take a stronger interest
in human rights legislation because these policies have implications for their ability to conduct
business abroad. They also have greater capacity to overcome the barriers to entry. Earlier research
on PACs and lobbying has placed firm size first in the list of factors that explain business political
activities (Boies 1989; Grier, Munger, and Roberts 1994; Hansen and Mitchell 2000; Bombardini
Hansen and Mitchell (2000) also identify the importance of government sales, for which we do not have an empirical
measure.
7
17
2008). And recent research has established that firm size and profitability are predictors of lobbying
on policies such as immigration, in part because larger firms have greater capacity to pay the upfront costs of entry (Kerr, Lincoln, and Mishra 2014).
Firms from more concentrated sectors—where a handful of firms control a large percent of
the market share—should also spend more to lobby. This follows from Olson’s (1965) Logic of
Collective Action, and has been found to be true for trade policy (Alt and Alesina 1996; Frieden 1991;
Hafner-Burton, Kousser, and Victor 2014). In essence, firms from concentrated sectors, and in
particular the largest firms from concentrated sectors, are better able to overcome the collective
action costs associated with lobbying. For these firms, the potential benefits from lobbying will be
worth the sunk costs because most of the advantage gained will go directly to them, instead of being
shared across a broad swath of their competitors.
In summary, taking into consideration a firm’s ability to overcome the barriers to entry
associated with lobbying, we argue that human rights lobbying expenditures reflect in part a firm’s
economic stakes—including their trade and foreign investment stakes—in human rights abusing
countries.
Analysis
This section utilizes our unique dataset to explore empirically the relationship between firms’
trade and investment interests and their human rights lobbying expenditures. Our first set of
dependent variables (estimates shown in Table 2) is composed of binary indicators of whether a firm
conducted any lobbying on Broad or Symbolic human rights policy.
Following Hafner-Burton et al. 2014, we account for a firm’s economic capacity to lobby by
measuring a firm’s overall Assets, in millions, using data from Compustat on all publicly traded firms.
Assets are a broad category including, among other values, a firm’s cash on hand, property, current
contracts, investments, and materials and supplies. We also measure the natural log of a firm’s Assets
18
Rank within their sector.8 To do this, we rank all publicly traded firms by assets, with “1” being the
largest within its two-digit sector code as determined by the North American Industry Classification
System (NAICS). These variables control for the possibility that firms with the largest market shares
may be more politically engaged on foreign policy.
To account for a firm’s capacity to overcome the collective action problem, we also adopt
Hafner-Burton et al.’s (2014) measure of the concentration of each firm’s sector (Sector Concentration).
For each sector, they estimate a regression with the log of each firm’s sales ranking (plus 0.5) as the
dependent variable and the log of the firm’s sales as the sole independent variable. The estimated
coefficient of sales for each sector is their measure of concentration, with larger (less negative)
coefficients indicating that the most highly ranked firms account for larger proportions of a sector’s
sales. We then interact sector concentration and asset rank (Rank*Concentration) because
concentration accentuates the impact of a firm’s ranking—top-ranked firms within a sector should
be even more likely to lobby when they operate in highly concentrated industries (Hafner-Burton,
Kousser, and Victor 2014).
Because of data limitations we can only evaluate our hypothesis about trade ties using data
on manufacturing sectors—we do not have access to individual firm-level trading data. These data
come from the US Census and track imports and exports between US sectors at the six-digit NAICS
level and foreign states (Schott 2008). Since manufacturers represent four of the five main sectors
that predominantly lobby human rights policy—only the information sector is excluded—our
findings offer substantial explanatory power.
We created measures at each firm’s six-digit NAICS sector level for each year of the sector’s
total amount of bilateral trade with human rights abusing countries (Total Trade w/ Abusers), the
proportion of a sector’s trade conducted with human rights abusing countries (% Trade w/ Abusers),
The raw distribution of ranks is skewed so we use the natural log of the firm’s rank within its sector so as to conform
more closely to the assumptions of OLS.
8
19
and an interaction of the two terms (% Trade*Total Trade).9 Specifically, for each six-digit NAICS
sector-year, we created a proportion of trade with states that fell below the mean CIRI Human
Rights Dataset indicator for respect for physical integrity and that sector’s total foreign trade with all
states (Cingranelli, Richards, and Clay 2014).10 The CIRI physical integrity indicator codes US
Department of State and Amnesty International human rights reports. It is an aggregate indicator
measuring states’ respect for their citizens’ rights to be free from political and other extrajudicial
killings, disappearance, torture, and political imprisonment. The physical integrity indicator ranges
from zero to eight, with eight representing full respect for all four rights. The mean for all states is
five.
The first column of Table 2 displays results from a logistic regression model. We calculate
robust standard errors and Congress fixed effects. Our first hypothesis finds support. Though the
effect is substantively small, it is highly statistically significant. Trading a lot with abusive states and
having a high proportion of trade with those countries increases a firm’s likelihood of lobbying
Congress on human rights policy. This effect can be more directly understood in terms of its
marginal effects, which we calculated using the Clarify package in Stata (Tomz, Wittenberg, and
King 2003). A one standard deviation shift from the mean of this interaction term (either by
increasing the amount of trade a sector conducts with human rights abusers, the proportion of its
trade conducted with abusers, or both) is associated with a fifteen percent change in the probability
a firm from that sector lobbies Congress on human rights policy.
TABLE 2
The number of observations in this analysis is deceptively large. Of the 12,529
manufacturing firm-year observations included in this analysis, less than one percent actually lobbied
In the appendix we offer an alternate measure using dichotomous measures of “high” versus “low” trade.
As a robustness check, we reran our analyses with a more restrictive definition of an abusing country. Our findings
hold with this more constrained cutoff. See appendix for more details.
9
10
20
human rights issues. In light of this skew in the data, we estimate a rare events logistic regression to
correct for potential bias (King and Zeng 2001; King and Zeng 2002; Tomz, King, and Zeng 1999).
The results of this model are displayed in the second column of Table 2 and are consistent.11
To evaluate our second hypothesis regarding foreign direct investment, we rely on the
publicly available data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (U.S. Department of Commerce
2015). Unfortunately, these data are limited to the two-digit NAICS sector level and only include
investment information for 57 countries. This sample is skewed toward European and South
American countries and is lacking coverage of much of Africa and Asia; however, it is the best
public data available. By offering less comprehensive coverage of severe rights-abusing countries,
these data likely underestimate the amount of FDI sectors have in human rights abusing countries.
This will bias against finding evidence in support of our hypothesized relationship.
Our FDI variables mirror the trade variables from Columns 1 and 2. FDI is measured in the
millions of US dollars at the two-digit NAICS sector level, by year. This data is then split based on
whether the investments were made in a state that respects or abuses its citizens’ human rights. Total
FDI with Abusers represents the firms’ sector’s total foreign direct investment in human rights
abusing states (where data is available) in year t. % FDI with Abusers is the percent of the sector’s
total FDI that is invested in abusing countries. The key independent variable is the interaction
between the sector’s investment in abusing countries and the percent of their total FDI this
investment represents (%FDI*Total FDI with Abusers). As with our trade variables, we expect that
making substantial investments in human rights abusing countries and having these investments
represent a large portion of the sector’s total FDI will lead a firm to be more likely to lobby human
rights policy in Congress.
Relogit results for all of our dependent variables remain consistent with our expectations and are displayed in the
appendix.
11
21
Though the results reported in Column 3 are substantively small, they support our second
hypothesis and are highly statistically significant. Firms whose sectors have large investments in
human rights abusing countries, where this investment represents a substantial percent of total
foreign direct investment, are significantly more likely to lobby Congress on human rights policy.
Though these data are limited in their coverage of countries and are aggregated to the two-digit
sector level, which is much less detailed than our trade data, they include all five of our main human
rights lobbying sectors. As such, though neither our trade nor FDI data are ideal they offer different
strengths. That our results hold across specifications suggests that there is a relationship between
firms’ economic interests and their lobbying behavior on human rights, even when controlling for
barriers to entry.
To evaluate our third hypothesis that economic ties will be a much weaker predictor of
lobbying symbolic legislation we estimate models using a dichotomous measure of lobbying on
symbolic human rights legislation. The findings reported in Columns 4 and 5 of Table 1 are
consistent with our expectations. In fact, we find no relationship between trading or investment
behavior and lobbying on symbolic bills.
Perhaps more important than whether a firm lobbies at all is how much they spend in an
effort to influence Congressional policy. In Table 3, we displays OLS regression results estimating
the natural log of total lobbying expenditures (in US $) on Broad bills, as well as on measures of
Direct bills which exclude military and trade human rights policy and Symbolic bills.12 We estimate
robust standard errors and year fixed effects. A firm’s industry-based trade relations and foreign
direct investment are also predictive of how much they spend. Controlling for the barriers to entry,
The natural log is used to normalize the distribution of observations. Most observations in our dataset conducted zero
lobbying on human rights policy so the distribution of the original data is highly skewed. However, because you cannot
take the natural log of zero, .01 was added to each observation before transformation. Transforming our data in this way
helps it conform to the linear assumptions of OLS. For further discussion of this problem and further robustness checks
using Box-Cox transformations, see the appendix.
12
22
firms in industries with strong economic ties to human rights abusing countries spend more money
lobbying on both Broad (Columns 1 and 2) and Direct (Columns 3 and 4) human rights legislation.
These findings are consistent with our argument that firms’ economic interests in abusive countries
drive (in part) corporate interest in US human rights policy.
TABLE 3
To further analyze the validity of our argument—and specifically Hypothesis 3—we reestimate the model on Symbolic human rights policy in Columns 5 and 6. Firms far outspend all other
interest groups combined by a factor of more than double lobbying symbolic legislation, although
only about five percent of firms that lobby human rights spend money on symbolic bills. Columns 5
and 6 of Table 3 demonstrate that trading and FDI are weaker predicators of lobbying on symbolic
human rights legislation than on broad or direct policy. Specifically, trade relations are not significant
predictors of lobbying on symbolic human rights policy. FDI is a significant predictor, however the
effect size is only one fifth of the size of the effect in earlier models (Columns 1-4 of Table 3). These
findings are consistent with the idea that symbolic bills provide less economic value for companies.
Meanwhile, the predictors of lobbying more generally remain strongly significant. This suggests that
while mainly large firms from concentrated sectors are capable of overcoming the collective action
challenges to any sort of lobbying, manufacturing firms likely perceive symbolic legislation as less
impactful for their economic relationships with human rights abusing countries.
We provide additional evidence in the appendix. First, we offer alternate, dichotomous
versions of our trade variables as either “high” or “low” trade. Second, because lobbying human
rights policy is a rare event, we show rare events logistic regressions using each of our dependent
variables. Third, we re-estimate our analyses using a more stringent definition of a human rights
abuser. Finally, because of the skewed nature of our data, we implement Box Cox transformations
23
instead of taking the natural log of expenditures (Box and Cox 1964). Our main results hold. For
more details on each of these robustness checks and coefficient tables, see the appendix.
Overall, these findings are consistent with our argument that firms operating in sectors that
trade and invest heavily with human rights abusing countries are more likely to lobby Congress on
bills with human rights implications. Depending on the preferences of these firms, these findings
could have potentially worrisome implications for the US human rights policymaking process.
Though firms are not required to disclose the content of their lobbying behavior or their position on
specific bills, and we thus cannot make definitive claims in this paper about their intent—we offer
preliminary evidence that corporate lobbying on human rights policy does not mirror the interests of
the American public and that much of the political process surrounding this legislation happens
behind closed doors, thus muting any public signal in support of human rights.
Implications
This paper’s primary purpose is to explain variation in corporate lobbying on human rights
foreign policy. Here, we only speculate on potential implications of our findings. Normatively, one
would hope that groups lobbying Congress on human rights policy would be in favor of genuine
human rights legislation. Anecdotally, corporate lobbying on human rights policy falls in both
directions, sometimes promoting a human rights agenda and sometimes subverting it. Whatever the
direction of lobbying, the position of corporate lobbyists will likely be dictated by the economic
interests of the firms they represent, rather than the moral implications of the legislation.
The intent behind most lobbying activity is private information. As a result we cannot
definitively verify why some firms are lobbying on human rights legislation—to support, change or
kill a bill. In this section we offer two pieces of suggestive information that firms’ preferences may,
on average, reflect an interest in watering down or deterring human rights legislation. Though only
suggestive (and we make no causal claims about actual effect on policy), this information begins to
24
paint a worrying picture of the intent behind at least some important fraction of corporate human
rights lobbying.
First, following Hafner-Burton et al. 2014, we map firms’ ideological ideal points. Using
Adam Bonica’s CFscores—ideological ideal points built from campaign donations—we can
compare the ideal points of firms that lobby Congress on human rights policy with the ideal points
of individual political donors in the US along a common scale (Bonica 2013). Figure 3 plots the ideal
points of individual donors, all interest groups, and all firms that lobby on human rights policy. The
vertical lines reflect the median ideal point of individuals (in gray) and corporate groups lobbying
human rights policy (dashed). While the American public is ideologically polarized between liberal
and conservative, firms that lobby on human rights are, on average, right of center. This may reflect
the fact that firms are uniformly giving money to centrist-Republicans, or (more likely, we think)
that firms are strategic political actors that donate to candidates from both parties in an effort to
maximize their influence in Congress. Either way, the corporate human rights lobby is significantly
more conservative (on average) than the median individual donor.
FIGURE 3
Additionally, and potentially more concerning, the preferences of corporate lobbyers are
highly concentrated. In contrast to all groups that make political donations, which are still relatively
centrally located but reflect a broad range of interests, corporate lobbyers’ ideal points are
concentrated and reflect a much narrower spectrum of preferences. Though not conclusive evidence
of bias, Figure 3 suggests that the preferences of firms lobbying on human rights may not reflect the
preferences or diversity in views of the American public more broadly. Additionally, it suggests that
corporate lobbyers have concentrated preferences and thus likely do not offer Congress a plurality
of opinions on human rights legislation.
25
A second piece of suggestive information comes from the lack of public hearings on human
rights bills. Congress did not hold a single public hearing on any of the bills in our Broad Human
Rights Policy category that attracted corporate lobbying. Though it is not unusual for legislation to
move through Congress without a full public hearing in committee, particularly sensitive legislation
that passes through foreign policy committees, it is striking that we cannot find a single example of a
public hearing on human rights legislation that attracted corporate interest. It is suggestive that
human rights bills that did not garner corporate lobbying attention, but that were lobbied by
advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch, occasionally did receive public hearings. This
suggests that public hearings, while not the norm, are available to proponents who request them.
Instead, firms seem to prefer to lobby Congress behind closed doors rather than through public
testimony. If firms genuinely supported human rights legislation, or wanted to send a signal to
consumers that they are not involved in a race to the bottom, public hearings would be in their
interest.
These pieces of suggestive information do not conclusively illuminate firms’ intentions.
However, when taken together with our earlier findings that the firms predominantly lobbying
human rights policy have substantial trade and investment interests in human rights abusing
countries, and tend to represent a small number of manufacturing sectors—including large
extractive industries—they paint a potentially worrying picture. These companies are infusing the
most lobbying money into the Congressional human rights policymaking process. And while their
preferences on legislation do not always run counter to the agenda of genuine human rights
promotion, it is likely that some significant portion of the time, they lobby to dispatch the human
rights movement’s goals.
Conclusion
26
This paper is among the first to systematically explore the drivers of Congressional lobbying
on US human rights policy. It establishes empirically that it is corporate interests and not human
rights groups that spend the most money trying to influence human rights legislation. That firms are
the dominant lobbyists on human rights is both surprising and also potentially worrisome. Our
evidence establishes that human rights lobbying is monopolized by a select group of firms, mainly in
manufacturing sectors, whose interest in human rights legislation is systematically related to their
trade and investment relations with human rights abusing countries.
We make no claims that lobbying necessarily translates directly into policy—it is difficult to
causally trace this relationship (notable efforts include Baumgartner et al. 2009; Bombardini 2008).
However, it is generally understood that lobbying can have some influence on the political process
in Congress at least some of the time (Baumgartner et al. 2009). And if that is true, the economic
interests of large oil, defense, and technology companies may have greater representation—and
perhaps more influence—on Congressional human rights policy than the interests of any other
lobbying group. The fact is that these companies are ideologically unrepresentative of the American
public and they may express preferences behind the scenes intending to undermine the broader
goals of the human rights movement.
27
References
Alesina, Alberto, and David Dollar. 2000. “Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?” Journal of
Economic Growth 5 (1): 33–63.
Alt, James E., and Alberto Alesina. 1996. “Political Economy: An Overview.” In A New Handbook of
Political Science, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, 645–74. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Ansolabehere, Stephen, John M. de Figueiredo, and James M. Snyder Jr. 2003. “Why Is There so
Little Money in U.S. Politics?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (1): 105–30.
Apollonio, Dorie E. 2005. “Predictors of Interest Group Lobbying Decisions.” The Forum 3 (3): 1–
19.
Apple. 2015. “Supplier Responsibility - Labor & Human Rights.” Apple. www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/labor-and-human-rights/.
Bartels, Larry M. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Baumgartner, Frank R., Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, David C. Kimball, and Beth L. Leech.
2009. Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Boies, John L. 1989. “Money, Business, and the State: Material Interests, Fortune 500 Corporations,
and the Size of Political Action Committees.” American Sociological Review 54 (5): 821–33.
Bombardini, Matilde. 2008. “Firm Heterogeneity and Lobby Participation.” Journal of International
Economics 75 (2): 329–48.
Bombardini, Matilde, and Francesco Trebbi. 2012. “Competition and Political Organization:
Together or Alone in Lobbying for Trade Policy?” Journal of International Economics 87 (1): 18–
26.
Bonica, Adam. 2013. Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections: [Computer File]
(version 1.0). Stanford University Libraries. http://data.stanford.edu/dime.
Box, G. E. P., and D. R. Cox. 1964. “An Analysis of Transformations.” Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society 26 (2): 211–52.
Brasher, Holly, and David Lowery. 2006. “The Corporate Context of Lobbying Activity.” Business
and Politics 8 (1): 1–25.
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Alastair Smith. 2007. “Foreign Aid and Policy Concessions.” Journal
of Conflict Resolution 51 (2): 251–84.
Chevron. 2010. Litigation in Ecuador Pertaining to Environmental Cleanup and Joint Venture with
Ecuadorian State-Owned Oil Company.
28
www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientissues_spec.php?id=D000000015&year=2010&spec=For
eign%20Relations. (March 10, 2015).
Cingranelli, David L., David L. Richards, and K. Chad Clay. 2014. “CIRI Human Rights Data
Project.” www.humanrightsdata.com/.
Clatanoff, William. 2005. “Labor Standards in Recent U.S. Trade Agreements.” Richmond Journal of
Global Law & Business 5 (2): 109–17.
Drezner, Daniel W. 2006. U.S. Trade Strategy: Free Versus Fair. New York: Council on Foreign
Relations.
Drope, Jeffrey M., and Wendy Hansen. 2006. “Does Firm Size Matter? Analyzing Business
Lobbying in the United States.” Business and Politics 8 (2): 1–19.
Drutman, Lee. 2015. “The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized
and Politics Became More Corporate.” Oxford University Press.
Duhigg, Charles, and David Barboza. 2012. “In China, Human Costs Are Built into an iPad.” New
York Times, January 25. <www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipadand-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html> accessed March 9, 2015.
Fleisher, Richard. 1993. “PAC Contributions and Congressional Voting on National Defense.”
Legislative Studies Quarterly 18 (3): 391–409.
Frieden, Jeffry A. 1991. “Invested Interests: The Politics of National Economic Policies in a World
of Global Finance.” International Organization 45 (4): 425–51.
Gilens, Martin. 2005. “Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness.” Public Opinion Quarterly 69 (5):
778–96.
Grier, Kevin B., and Michael C. Munger. 1993. “Comparing Interest Group PAC Contributions to
House and Senate Incumbents, 1980-1986.” Journal of Politics 55 (3): 615–43.
doi:10.2307/2131991.
Grier, Kevin B., Michael C. Munger, and Brian E. Roberts. 1994. “The Determinants of Industry
Political Activity, 1978-1986.” American Political Science Review 88 (4): 911–26.
Grossman, Gene M., and Elhanan Helpman. 1994. “Protection for Sale.” American Economic Review
84 (4): 833–50.
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M. 2005. “Trading Human Rights: How Preferential Trade Agreements
Influence Government Repression.” International Organization 59 (3): 593–629.
———. 2009. Forced To Be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., Thad Kousser, and David G. Victor. 2014. “The Political Economy of
Foreign Policy Lobbying.” Working paper. University of California, San Diego.
29
Hansen, Wendy L., and Neil J. Mitchell. 2000. “Disaggregating and Explaining Corporate Political
Activity: Domestic and Foreign Corporations in National Politics.” American Political Science
Review 94 (4): 891–903.
Hart, Kim. 2010. “Rep. Smith: Google Makes ‘180-Degree Turn’ on Bill Backing Internet
Freedom.” TheHill, January 15. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/76431-googlereverses-position-on-internet-freedom-bill.
Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Benjamin I. Page. 2005. “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?” American
Political Science Review 99 (1): 107–23.
Keohane, Robert O., and Helen V. Milner, eds. 1996. Internationalization and Domestic Politics.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kerr, William R., William F. Lincoln, and Prachi Mishra. 2014. “The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying.”
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6 (4): 343–79.
Kim, In Song. 2012. “A Theory of Open Trade with Heterogeneous Firms.” Working Paper
presented at MPSA Annual Meeting, Chicago.
———. 2013. “Political Cleavages within Industry: Firm Level Lobbying for Trade Liberalization.”
Working paper. Princeton University.
King, Gary, and Langche Zeng. 2001. “Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data.” Political Analysis 9:
137–63.
———. 2002. “Estimating Risk and Rate Levels, Ratios and Differences in Case-Control Studies.”
Statistics in Medicine 21 (10): 1409–27.
Koh, Wei Chern. 2011. “What Drives Firms’ Decisions to Lobby and Determinants of Their
Lobbying Positions: Evidence from Firms’ Comment Letter Submissions during FASB’s
Stock Option Expensing Proposal in 2004.” International Journal of Accounting 46 (1): 1–24.
Lowery, David. 2007. “Why Do Organized Interest Lobby? A Multi-Goal, Multi-Context Theory of
Lobbying.” Polity 39 (1): 29–54.
Ludema, Rodney D., Anna Maria Mayda, and Prachi Mishra. 2010. “Protection for Free?: The
Political Economy of US Tariff Suspensions.” IMF Working Paper WP/10/211.
Washington, DC.
Marceau, Nicolas, and Michael Smart. 2003. “Corporate Lobbying and Commitment Failure in
Capital Taxation.” American Economic Review 93 (1): 241–51.
Mark, Roy. 2010. “Google, China Dispute Revives Global Online Freedom Act.” eWeek, January 17.
<www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Google-China-Dispute-Revives-Global-OnlineFreedom-Act-493296> accessed April 14, 2015.
McKinley, Robert D., and Richard Little. 1979. “The US Aid Relationship: A Test of the Recipient
Need and the Donor Interest Models.” Political Studies 27 (2): 236–50.
30
Milner, Helen V. 1997. Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Milyo, Jeffrey, David Primo, and Timothy Groseclose. 2000. “Corporate PAC Campaign
Contributions in Perspective.” Business and Politics 2 (1): 75–88.
Mosley, Layna. 2008. “Workers’ Rights in Open Economies: Global Production and Domestic
Institutions in the Developing World.” Comparative Political Studies 41 (4-5): 674–714.
———. 2011. Labor Rights and Multinational Production. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mosley, Layna, and Saika Uno. 2007. “Racing to the Bottom or Climbing to the Top? Economic
Globalization and Collective Labor Rights.” Comparative Political Studies 40 (8): 923–48.
Neumayer, Eric. 2003. “Is Respect for Human Rights Rewarded? An Analysis of Total Bilateral and
Multilateral Aid Flows.” Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2): 510–27.
Nownes, Anthony J. 2012. Interest Groups in American Politics: Pressure and Power. New York: Routledge.
Olson Jr., Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Plouffe, Michael. 2012. “Liberalization for Sale: Heterogeneous Firms and Lobbying Over FTAs.”
APSA Annual Meeting Paper, New Orleans.
Poe, Steven C., and C. Neal Tate. 1994. “Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the
1980s: A Global Analysis.” American Political Science Review 88 (4): 853–72.
Rogowski, Ronald. 1987. “Political Cleavages and Changing Exposure to Trade.” American Political
Science Review 81 (4): 1121–37.
Romero, Simon and Clifford Krauss. 2009. “In Ecuador, Resentment of Oil Company Oozes.” New
York Times, May 15.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/business/global/15chevron.html?page
wanted=all&_r=0 (April 16, 2015).
Ruggie, John G. 2013. Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights. New York: W. W.
Norton & Co.
Schattschneider, Elmer E. 1960. The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Schlozman, Kay Lehman. 1984. “What Accent the Heavenly Chorus? Political Equality and the
American Pressure System.” Journal of Politics 46 (4): 1006–32.
Schlozman, Kay Lehman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady. 2012. The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal
Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
31
Schott, Peter K. 2008. “The Relative Sophistication of Chinese Exports.” Economic Policy 23 (53): 5–
49.
Spar, Debora L. 1998. “The Spotlight and the Bottom Line: How Multinationals Export Human
Rights.” Foreign Affairs (March/April).
Stimson, James A., Michael B. Mackuen, and Robert S. Erikson. 1995. “Dynamic Representation.”
American Political Science Review 89 (3): 543–65.
Tomz, Michael, Gary King, and Langche Zeng. 1999. “RELOGIT: Rare Events Logistic Regression,
Version 1.1.” Dataset. http://gking.harvard.edu/relogit.
Tomz, Michael, Jason Wittenberg, and Gary King. 2003. “Clarify: Software for Interpreting and
Presenting Statistical Results.” Journal of Statistical Software 8 (1): 1–30.
Truman, David B. 1951. The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf.
United States Congress. 2010. H.R.2194: Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and
Divestment Act of 2010. 111th Congress (2009-2010).
U.S. Department of Commerce. 2015. “Bureau of Economic Analysis.” Foreign Direct Investment
in the United States. www.bea.gov/international/di1fdiop.htm.
U.S. Department of State. 2015. “Human Rights Reports.” Human Rights Reports.
www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S.-Pakistan Business Council. 2009. “Strengthening the U.S.Pakistan Economic Partnership.”
https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/legacy/reports/0903_uspakis
tan_opt.pdf (March 10, 2015).
Vogel, David, and Robert A Kagan. 2004. “Introduction: National Regulations in a Global
Economy.” In Dynamics of Regulatory Change: How Globalization Affects National Regulatory
Policies, edited by David Vogel and Robert A Kagan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
32
Tables
33
34
35
Figures
36
37
38
Appendix
Robustness Check: Alternate measure of trade variables
In Tables 4 and 5 we provide an alternative measure of our key independent variable on
trade relations. The variable “High Percent Trade with Abusers” is a dichotomous measure of
whether or not the firm’s sector conducts more than 38 percent of its trade (the mean within our
dataset) with human rights abusing states. The variable “High Trade with Abusers” is a dichotomous
measure that takes a value of one when the firm’s sector conducts more than 29.8 billion dollars of
trade per year (the mean) with human rights abusing states. “High Trade*High Percent” is an
interaction between the two terms, which will take a value of one when a firm’s sector trades an
above average amount with human rights abusing states and when that trade makes up an above
average amount of their total trade. Results with this alternative specification are consistent with our
expectations.
39
40
Robustness Check: Rare events logistic regressions
As a robustness check we include rare events logistic regression results with dichotomous
measures of any lobbying on each of our three categories of human rights legislation as the
dependent variables. Results are displayed in Table 6 and conform with the logistic regression results
presented in the paper.
41
Robustness Check: Using a More Stringent Definition of a Human Rights Abusers
As a further robustness check, we restricted our definition of what counted as a human
rights abusing country. Our main analysis in the body of the paper counts any country with a CIRI
Physical Integrity score below the mean (five) as an abuser. Table 7, below, restricts this definition to
the bottom quartile of countries. Under this more stringent cutoff, any country with a CIRI Physical
Integrity Score less than or equal to three counts as a human rights abuser. Examples of states with
CIRI Physical Integrity scores less than or equal to three include Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, and Iran.
Examples of states that are included in our main analysis as human rights abusers, but not included
in this more restrictive analysis (i.e. states with Physical Integrity scores of four or five) include
42
Jamaica, Liberia, and Malawi. As Table 7 shows, our main results hold for the direct human rights
policy dependent variable. This suggests that it is not just countries with barely below average
human rights records that are driving our results. When firms trade with states that have terrible
human rights records, they tend to spend more money lobbying human rights issues in Congress.
Robustness Check: Box Cox Transformation
Because few of our observations participate in human rights lobbying, our dependent
variables are highly skewed. In our main analysis we use the natural log of our DVs to help account
for this skewness. However, the concern remains that the lingering skewed nature of our variables
are biasing our results. As a robustness check, we transform each dependent variable using a Box
43
Cox transformation (Box and Cox 1964). The Box Cox transformation scales the variable x by a
manually determined λ, using the following formula:
𝑥𝜆 ′ =
! ! !!
!
.
As λ approaches zero, this formula approaches the log(x). Using the boxcox call in R’s MASS
package, we calculated the appropriate λ for each of our dependent variable and transform our data.
Table 8 displays the results of our analysis using these transformed dependent variables. As you can
see, our main results hold. The signs are flipped because the transformation reverses the distribution
of our data. In other words, non-lobbyers are designated a larger value than lobbyers. As such, a
negative coefficient signifies an increase in lobbying. What is important to note is that our key
independent variable—the interaction between trading a lot with human rights abusers and having
that trade be a high percent of your trade—remains significant for both Broad Human Rights Policy
and Direct Human Rights Policy, but not for Symbolic Human Rights Policy.
44
45