Citizens united and state environmental policy, regulations, and outcomes

ABSTRACT

The impact of corporate political spending on environmental policy has drawn numerous attention from researchers and policymakers. However, few studies have analyzed the empirical effect of corporate spending on environmental policy in aggregate. In this study, I analyze the impact of corporate independent spending bans on state environmental policy, utilizing the repeal of such bans in 23 states following the 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision as a research design. Through difference-in-differences tests, I find no evidence that the removal of independent expenditure bans influenced state environmental policy, regulations, or outcomes, or overall policy liberalism. I also find that corporate direct contributions did not increase in treated states, which may explain the lack of environmental policy effects. These results demonstrate that corporations did not utilize the new spending avenue after Citizens United to influence state environmental policy in aggregate and raise questions concerning corporate political spending and environmental preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental policy
• corporate political spending
• campaign finance laws
• state politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2023.2215133.

Notes

1. Data accessed from Opensecrets.org.

2. See details on corporate responses to leaving the Paris agreement here: https://www.c2es.org/press-release/major-companies-urge-white-house-to-stay-in-paris-agreement/

3. Date from Climate Impact Partners report “Fortune Global 500 Climate Commitments.”

4. See details on the California automaker agreement on emissions here:https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/07/25/california-and-major-automakers-reach-groundbreakingframework-agreement-on-clean-emission-standards/

5. The EPA does not provide yearly data on the number of facilities in operation prior to 2021.

6. Data from the U.S. EIA.

7. The 13 states are: AK, CA, CO, CT, IA, KY, MA, ME, MI, MT, TX, WA, and WI. Data on indirect expenditures is from Hunt et al. (2020), while data on direct contributions and lobbying is from the National Institute of Money in Politics. The corporate numbers reflected here are for groups coded as ”General Business”, which represent an undercount of all corporate spending.

8. The contribution data and group coding were obtained from the National Institute of Money in Politics.