Bruce F. Freed is President and Co-founder, Jeanne Hanna is Research Director, and Karl J. Sandstrom is Strategic Advisor at the Center for Political Accountability. This post is based on their CPA publication. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Corporate Political Speech: Who Decides? (discussed on the Forum here) by Lucian Bebchuk, Robert J. Jackson Jr.; The Untenable Case for Keeping Investors in the Dark (discussed on the Forum here) by Lucian Bebchuk, Robert J. Jackson, Jr., James Nelson, and Roberto Tallarita; The Politics of CEOs (discussed on the Forum here) by Alma Cohen, Moshe Hazan, Roberto Tallarita, and David Weiss; and Shining Light on Corporate Political Spending (discussed on the Forum here) by Lucian Bebchuk, and Robert J. Jackson Jr.
Companies today accept that political spending poses serious risks. A 2017 Iowa Law Review article, “Campaign Finance Reform Without Law,” spotlighted how companies increasingly were adopting political disclosure and accountability policies to better manage their spending. As the article pointed out, the number of companies doing so had reached the point where “private ordering” made those policies and practices the norm.
Since then, the Center for Political Accountability and the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute have gone further and developed frameworks for corporate political engagement. The Center, specifically, focused on election-related spending in developing the CPA-Zicklin Model Code of Conduct for Corporate Political Spending. The Erb Institute’s Principles for Corporate Political Responsibility are more general and included lobbying and general company conduct.
