By pursuing private and collective political action in the nonmarket environment, businesses attempt to influence public policy that shapes their operating environment. This dissertation considers how a firm’s market-based experience and its accumulation of political resources affect how the firm combines private and collective political tactics. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) I investigate how a firm’s alliance experience, political resources and prior collective political experience influence the autonomy of its Corporate Political Activity (CPA). I use fixed effects GLS regression with clustered standard errors to test my model on a panel of 21,329 firm/year observations of 2,779 U.S. property casualty insurance companies over the ten-year period between 2005 and 2014. I find support for the influence of state-level political resources, equity alliances, and the interaction of prior collective CPA experience with regulatory complexity and learning capacity on autonomy. My findings contribute to the growing literature connecting market and non-market strategies by linking collaboration in the political arena to the related market activity of alliance experience. Findings also contribute to our understanding of how participation in a collective provides opportunities for learning, and reveals that taking advantage of this opportunity depends on a firm’s learning capacity and the complexity of its regulatory environment. These findings add insight to the literatures on CPA, inter-organizational learning, collective action and trade associations.

The corporate political activity field has focused on the study of political capabilities that allow firms to influence governments and regulators. Building on previous studies, this thesis examines a set of capabilities that allow host firms to adapt to rather than influence political environments. Specifically, this set of adaptive political capabilities can be used by firms to confront host country political contexts in emerging economies that share two characteristics: authoritarian regimes and weak institutions. The findings of this thesis show that host firms can develop and use adaptive political capabilities rather than political capabilities to start and sustain their operations in this type of political contexts. This entails attuning firm processes, structures, and practices to local norms and political behaviors, rather than attempting to shape the host country political environment in its own likeness. Our results suggest host firms can develop adaptive political capabilities to enhance their strategic repertoire when starting or sustaining operations in emerging economies with such characteristics. Our contribution is that by using mixed methods, we provide and test several exploratory propositions that support the conceptualization of a framework to guide the development of adaptive political capabilities by host firms and we make explicit a taxonomy of corporate adaptive political strategies that can enable firms to envision how they can adapt to host political contexts.

The corporate political activity field has focused on the study of political capabilities that allow firms to influence governments and regulators. Building on previous studies, this thesis examines a set of capabilities that allow host firms to adapt to rather than influence political environments. Specifically, this set of adaptive political capabilities can be used by firms to confront host country political contexts in emerging economies that share two characteristics: authoritarian regimes and weak institutions. The findings of this thesis show that host firms can develop and use adaptive political capabilities rather than political capabilities to start and sustain their operations in this type of political contexts. This entails attuning firm processes, structures, and practices to local norms and political behaviors, rather than attempting to shape the host country political environment in its own likeness. Our results suggest host firms can develop adaptive political capabilities to enhance their strategic repertoire when starting or sustaining operations in emerging economies with such characteristics. Our contribution is that by using mixed methods, we provide and test several exploratory propositions that support the conceptualization of a framework to guide the development of adaptive political capabilities by host firms and we make explicit a taxonomy of corporate adaptive political strategies that can enable firms to envision how they can adapt to host political contexts.

There is an emergent consensus that the ‘poverty reduction through good governance’ agenda has failed to meet expectations. The capacity of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to cultivate the political economies and state-society synergies that might be supportive of more pro-poor development trajectories is contested. Advocates of inclusive liberalism identify increased political space for NGOs focused on popular empowerment and policy influence within the participatory spaces created by the good governance agenda. More radical critiques cast NGOs as apolitical brokers of neo-liberal development resources which distract from or are disinterested in more fundamental questions of redistribution. This thesis explores the potential for Ugandan NGOs to cultivate supportive conditions for a more redistributive development process amidst a semi-authoritarian, patronage-based, political regime and within a predominantly agrarian economy, using the lens of a single case study organisation situated in the Western region of the country. The findings suggest Ugandan NGOs should move beyond strategies associated with inclusive liberal governance towards a closer engagement with the politics and political economy of progressive change. Micro-enterprise and economic associational development emerge as more effective enhancers of political capabilities among the poor than strategies aimed solely at promoting inclusive liberal participation because they can tackle the socio-economic power relations that curb political agency in such contexts, and begin to undermine patronage-politics. In contrast, strategies for enhanced inclusive liberal participation engage with the formal de jure rules of the game in ways that either sidestep or re-enforce the de-facto patronage-based political system and fail to tackle the power relations that perpetuate ineffective forms of governance. Creating new cross-class deliberative spaces which engage with grass roots perspectives, can facilitate the emergence of new ways of thinking that promote a more pro-poor orientation among development stakeholders. Triangulation of qualitative primary data and relevant literature leads to the overarching conclusion that NGOs operating in such contexts are more likely to enhance the political capabilities of disadvantaged groups by adhering to a principle of self-determination. This focuses energy and resources on non-directive facilitative support to disadvantaged groups. This enables them to a) make socio-economic progress; b) become (better) organised; c) develop the necessary skills and knowledge to advance their interests; and d) cultivate opportunities for direct engagement with power holders and decision-makers. This approach requires a high level of what the thesis terms ‘NGO political capacity’ and a far more open-ended and programmatic approach to the provision of development aid than currently prevails.