Campaign finance laws aim to limit an individual’s influence over the political process.We show that corporate ownership may be an important mechanism by which institutional investors circumvent such constraints and amplify their influence.  Using data on the political giving and ownership of all 13-F investors between 1980 and 2016, we show that the probability that a firm’s Political Action Committee (PAC) donates to a politician supported by an investor’s PAC nearly doubles after the investor acquires a large stake,  and that it in-creases five-fold when the investor obtains a board seat.  This increase in similarity of political giving coincides with the election cycle the acquisition takes place in, and is not driven by selection into specific politically strategic acquisitions, as convergence in political behavior is observed even for exogenously determined acquisitions caused by stock index inclusions.  The relationship is stronger for private funds, and those with high partisanship, suggesting the relationship is driven by investor preferences rather than strategic concerns.  Finally, we show that portfolio firms’ PAC expenditure experiences a relatively large shift at the acquisition date relative to past giving, whereas no such pattern is observed for institutional investors.We argue that these findings are best explained by investors influencing portfolio firm giving,suggesting that PAC giving may be another means by which influential shareholders impact corporate decision-making, in a manner that amplifies investors’ political voice.

My research considers the potential for power in information. I integrate psychology and political science in order to identify points at which new information can have the most profound effect on the way people form political opinions, make political choices and, ultimately, take political actions.

Our project aims to establish whether targeted provision of constituents’ preferences increases the responsiveness of delegates to the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA). Utilizing a randomized control trial (RCT), we assign legislators to one of three groups: (1) those briefed on the opinions of their provincial citizenry; (2) those presented with the preferences of local firms; and (3) those receiving no informational treatment what- soever. We also used a saturation design, applying the treatments to differing shares of delegates across provinces. After the summer 2018 session, we collected behavioral data on delegates from the legislative session, including answers to a VNA Library survey about debate preparation; the identity of speakers in group caucuses, query sessions, and floor debates; and the textual content of those speeches. We find consistent evi- dence that citizen-treated delegates were more responsive, via debate preparation and the decision to speak; evidence from speech content is more mixed. More speculatively, we find little evidence of spillover from treated to untreated delegates, but substantial evidence of treatment reinforcement. Citizen-treated delegates grew more responsive as more of their peers possessed identical information.

Sharp, short-lived increases in rule enforcement are common in hierarchical organizations facing multiple objectives. Using data from China that links quasi-random variation in the intensity of environmental policing to high-frequency air pollution data, we show that crackdowns in over short (one-month) periods result in a sharp (approximately 30%) reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution around coal power plants. Pollution reverts to prior levels after crackdowns end. The pace of reversion is faster for firms that outrank the city government, suggesting that hierarchical ties to China’s central authorities attenuate a firm’s accountability to the local environmental protection bureau. Engaging citizen informants deters a subset of egregious polluters during crackdowns, but has no lasting effect, especially among outranking firms. Our results document empirically the limits of a highly centralized approach to improving environmental governance through short-lived enforcement crackdowns.

Due especially to the work of Friedrich Hayek, “spontaneous order” has become an influential concept in social theory. It seeks to explain how human practices and institutions emerge as unintended consequences of myriad individual actions, and points to the limits of rationalism and conscious design in social life. The political implications of spontaneous order theory explain both the enthusiasm and the skepticism is has generated, but its basic mechanisms remain elusive and under-examined. This paper teases out the internal logic of the concept, arguing that it can be taken to mean several distinct things. Some are forward-looking (defining it in terms of present-day functioning) while others are backward-looking (defining it in terms of historical origins). Yet none of these possibilities prove fully coherent or satisfactory, suggesting that spontaneous order cannot bear the analytical weight that has been placed upon it.

James Morone is the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and director of the the A. Alfred Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. He grew up in Rio de Janeiro and New York, received his BA from Middlebury College and his PhD at the University of Chicago.

Morone has been a visiting professor at Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Bremen, Germany. The Brown University classes of 1993, 1999, 2001, 2007, and 2008 voted him the Hazeltine Citation as the teacher that most inspired them. Morone has served as chair of the political science department and currently chairs the faculty executive committee, which is responsible for faculty governance at Brown.

Morone has written ten books and more than 150 articles, reviews, and essays on American political history, health care policy, and social issues. His first book, The Democratic Wish, was named a “notable book of 1991” by The New York Times and won the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on US national policy. His Hellfire Nation: the Politics of Sin in American History was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and named a top book of 2003 by numerous newspapers and magazines. His The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office (co-authored with David Blumenthal, MD) was featured on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. According to unreliable sources, President Obama was seen reading the book at Camp David. Morone’s most recent book, The Devils We Know, was published by University Press of Kansas in November 2014.