Corporate political activity across corporatist countries: Evidence from Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands

In the last decades, interest representation has changed in notable ways. Among the crucial developments is a more prominent role of other actors than traditional interest groups. Recent research has for example documented an increasing presence of private corporations in some political systems. However, our knowledge about the factors affecting corporate political activity is still mainly based on studies conducted in the US and there is a lack of studies comparing corporations’ political role across different countries. In this paper, we compare corporate political activity in three traditionally corporatist countries in which lobbying alone by corporations has been less common due to the strong role of business association. We analyze the importance of factors at different levels in explaining corporate political activity: 1) the level of the individual firm, 2) the sector firms operate in and 3) the country level. Empirically, we rely on surveys of corporations in Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. Conducted in 2022-2023, the surveys were answered by app. 1,500 firms. We focus on explaining variation in corporations’ 1) political tactics including both direct and indirect tactics and 2) access to different policy-making venues at the local, national and EU level.