|
The Policy-Planning Capacity of the American Corporate CommunityCorporations, Policy-Oriented Nonprofits, and the Inner Circle in
|
name & | main activities/functions | more information |
---|---|---|
National Association of Manufacturers (1895) | Policy discussions, developing position papers, lobbying Congress | Since 1903, its primary focus has been on limiting union growth and influence. |
Carnegie Corporation (1911) | Donations to a wide range of nonprofit organizations | The largest foundation in the 1930s, but only #24 among family foundations in 2010. |
Rockefeller Foundation (1913) | Donations to a wide range of nonprofit organizations | The 2nd-largest foundation in the 1930s, but only #15 among family foundations in 2010. |
The Brookings Institution (1916) | Employs full-time experts who study and discuss a wide range of policy issues of general importance | Its employees have served on numerous committees within policy-discussion groups and in appointed positions in the government. |
Council on Foreign Relations (1921) | Policy discussions, developing position papers | Created by New York corporate leaders to advocate greater American involvement in international affairs. |
Business Advisory Council* (1933) | Policy discussion, interaction with government officials | Established as an advisory group for the National Recovery Administration, it became a fully independent organization in 1963 and changed its name to the "Business Council." |
Business Roundtable (1972) | Policy discussion, interaction with government officials | Originally established as the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable in 1969; reorganized and upgraded in stature in 1972. |
Two of the nonprofits, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, are charitable foundations that provide financial support to policy-discussion groups and make financial grants to the policy experts who take part in the policy-discussion groups, among the many grants they give on a wide variety of topics. The two foundations also sometimes sponsor special commissions on specific issues, such as higher education. The final nonprofit, The Brookings Institution, is a think tank that receives money from large foundations and employs a wide range of policy experts who take part in policy-discussion groups, write policy proposals, and provide advice to government officials.
The decision to use the same six policy-oriented nonprofits in both datasets so as to make the two eras as comparable as possible, despite the creation of many new policy-oriented nonprofits since the 1930s, was complicated by the fact that leaders within the Business Advisory Council created two different organizations over the subsequent decades in order to augment its policy-planning and lobbying capacities. It first created the now-defunct Committee for Economic Development in 1942, a policy-discussion group that included academic advisors and published numerous policy proposals on a wide range of topics (Collins, 1981; Domhoff, 2013, both of which build on the original archival sources studied by the authors). Between 1969 and 1972, leaders in the Business Advisory Council and the Committee for Economic Development jointly developed the Business Roundtable as a more activist policy-discussion organization, which was designed to have a visible lobbying presence as well as engaging in the development of published policy statements (Domhoff, 2020, Chap. 5; Gross, 1995, pp. 234-239; Linder, 1999. Chapters 7-8; Waterhouse, 2014, Chap. 3).
The role of members of the Business Advisory Council and the Committee for Economic Development in the establishment of the Business Roundtable is seen most directly in the fact that 10 of the 11 members of the Business Roundtable's founding Executive Committee, which was in effect the organization's board of directors, were members of the Business Advisory Council. Moreover, 5 of those 10 members from the Business Advisory Council were members of the Committee for Economic Development as well. It was therefore decided to treat the Business Roundtable as the successor organization to the Business Advisory Council in 1935 based on its similar role. However, this decision had little impact on the results that are reported in this article, which are very similar if the Business Advisory Council rather than the Business Roundtable is included in the 2010-2011 data, as is shown in more detailed tables and analyses that are available on GitHub: https://github.com/tamills1981/US-Corporate-Community.
Finally, it should be emphasized again that the general membership of the policy-discussion nonprofits included in this study — the Business Advisory Council (in 1935-1936), the Business Roundtable (in 2010-2011), and the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Foreign Relations in both years — are not part of the formal network analyses reported in this article, which only include the directors of these nonprofit organizations. The members, though, are relevant because they take part in discussions within these organizations, attend talks by policy experts, and know the basic content of the detailed reports produced by committees within these organizations, which sometimes lead to legislative proposals. So while they are not included in the network analysis, which is based on the small-group settings provided by board meetings attended by the directors, the members' pervasiveness in the overall corporate leadership group is detailed in the final subsection of the Methods and Results section below.
This subsection provides a step-by-step presentation of the methods of analysis and results, including both network measures and descriptive statistics. All the network analyses were conducted using the Python library NetworkX. The scripts and networks are available on GitHub: https://github.com/tamills1981/US-Corporate-Community, along with data tables containing the results reported here as well as more detailed network measures. In addition, expanded versions of both the 1935-1936 and 2010-2011 datasets, which include larger numbers of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, are available for anyone's use at http://whorulesamerica.net/power_elite/. This portal also provides a user-friendly interface through which interested researchers can view the affiliations of any given organization or individual in the dataset.
The first relevant findings, which are presented in detail in Table 2, concern the size of the large inter-corporate networks in 1935-1936 and 2010-2011 that are created by those directors who sit on two or more corporate boards. The results are very similar for both years: 218 of the 250 corporations (87.2%) are part of the corporate community (the main component) in 1935-1936, and 220 of 250 (88%) in 2010-2011. However, there is a large drop in the number of connections between corporations in 2010-2011 compared with 1935-1936. This decline is seen very directly in the differences in the number of links in the networks overall, and in the mean number of links for each corporation, which declined from 10.05 in 1935-1936 to 5.14 in 2010-2011. This leads to different levels of connectivity within the corporate community as a whole in the two eras. This difference is clearly shown by the mean number of "steps" any one corporation is from any other, which is calculated on the basis of the "paths" created by shared directors. This metric is known as the "average shortest path," which increased from a mean of 2.87 in 1935-1936 to 3.72 in 2010-2011.
corporations only | corporations & policy nonprofits | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
1935-36 | 2010-11 | 1935-36 | 2010-11 | |
Number of orgs in one large network | 218 | 220 | 225 | 226 |
Number of links in the network | 1095 | 565 | 1173 | 643 |
Mean number of links | 10.05 | 5.14 | 10.43 | 5.69 |
Mean % within 1-step reach | 4.63% | 2.35% | 4.65% | 2.53% |
Mean % within 2-step reach | 33.58% | 13.22% | 34.55% | 15.85% |
Mean % within 3-step reach | 78.21% | 43.51% | 79.04% | 49.29% |
Average shortest path | 2.87 | 3.72 | 2.85 | 3.59 |
When the six policy-oriented nonprofits are added to the 250 corporations for 1935-1936 and 2010-2011, all six are part of the corporate community. Only one of the few isolate corporations was drawn into the main component for 1935-1936 by the addition of the nonprofits, and no new corporations were drawn into the main component for 2010-2011. In addition, the differences between the 1935-1936 and 2010-2011 networks are present whether only corporations are included, or if the policy-oriented nonprofits are added to the mix. Several findings based on a variety of network measures, with and without the nonprofits included, which were briefly overviewed in this and the preceding paragraph, are brought together in Table 2.
The extent to which the policy-oriented nonprofits are part of the corporate community in both 1935-1936 and 2010-2011 can be shown by examining the number of directors of nonprofits who are also members of the overall corporate leadership group, which as already noted consists of all corporate directors who serve on one or more corporate boards. This analysis is carried out using descriptive statistics. As can be seen in Table 3, their inclusion in 1935-1936 ranges from eight of 14 directors of the Business Advisory Council, who are on the board of directors of 28 corporations, to three of 14 directors of The Brookings Institution, who sit on five corporate boards. For 2010-2011, the figures for the Business Roundtable suggest an even greater level of integration than its forerunner, the Business Advisory Council: all 18 of the Business Roundtable directors are on at least one top-250 corporate board, and they hold 33 seats on 24 corporate boards overall. The Brookings Institution, with 16 of its 49 directors on the boards of 28 different corporations in 2010-2011, became connected to far more corporations than had been the case in 1935-1936. On the other hand, there is an extremely large decline in the number of corporate links with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
# of directors | # directors with top-250 corporate links | % directors with top-250 corporate links | # linked corps. per director | # of largest 250 corps represented | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | |
BAC/BRT | 14 | 18 | 8 | 18 | 57% | 100% | 1.43 | 1.33 | 20 | 24 |
Council on Foreign Relations | 25 | 37 | 10 | 12 | 40% | 32% | 0.60 | 0.46 | 15 | 17 |
Nat'l Assn. of Manufacturers | 16 | 24 | 6 | 4 | 38% | 17% | 0.44 | 0.21 | 7 | 5 |
Brookings Institution | 14 | 49 | 3 | 16 | 21% | 33% | 0.36 | 0.57 | 5 | 28 |
Rockefeller Foundation | 28 | 25 | 8 | 1 | 29% | 4% | 0.54 | 0.04 | 15 | 1 |
Carnegie Corporation | 17 | 24 | 5 | 2 | 29% | 8% | 0.71 | 0.08 | 12 | 2 |
The findings presented in Tables 2 and 3 demonstrate that the policy-oriented nonprofits are part of the corporate community in both 1935-1936 and 2010-2011. However, it is possible to be more specific about their location within the corporate community on the basis of their inclusion within increasingly smaller and more tightly connected subnetworks that also include corporations. These nested subnetworks within the inter-organizational networks, which are akin to concentric circles, are identified by increasing the minimum number of organizations with which every organization must be connected in order to be included. If, for example, every organization must be connected to at least two other organizations, then 23 of the original 225 organizations in the 1935-1936 inter-organizational network are removed, creating a subnetwork that includes the remaining 202 organizations. Requiring at least three links still leaves a very large subnetwork of 187 organizations. If the number of required links is doubled from three to six, the nested subnetwork is reduced to 136 organizations. This step-by-step approach is known as "k-core decomposition," with k representing the minimum number of connections every member of the subnetwork must have, and it has proven to be useful in previous studies of corporate and elite networks for Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland (Huijzer & Heemskerk, 2021; Larsen & Ellersgaard, 2017; Rossier et al., 2022).
The smallest possible nested subnetwork in 1935-1936 includes a large number of organizations (99), each of which has eight connections (k-8), as presented in Table 4. This large k-core, which encompasses 44.0% of the corporate community, includes four of the six policy-oriented nonprofits — the Business Advisory Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation — as well as 95 corporations.
# of organizations | policy nonprofits | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
1936 (n=225) | 2011 (n=226) | 1936 | 2011 | |
k-8 (8+ links) | 99 (44.0%) | — | BAC, CFR, RF, CC | |
k-7 (7+ links) | 112 (49.8%) | — | BI | |
k-6 (6+ links) | 136 (60.4%) | 7 (3.1%) | BI, CFR | |
k-5 (5+ links) | 151 (67.1%) | 70 (31.0%) | NAM | BRT |
k-4 (4+ links) | 175 (77.8%) | 106 (46.9%) | ||
k-3 (3+ links) | 187 (83.1%) | 156 (69.0%) | NAM | |
k-2 (2+ links) | 202 (89.8%) | 200 (88.5%) | CC | |
Corporate community (k-1; at least one link) | 225 (100%) | 226 (100%) | RF |
By contrast, the largest k-core in 2010-2011 has only seven organizations, each of which has six or more connections (k-6). Yet this very small number of organizations includes both The Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, along with such well-known corporations as FedEx and IBM. Reducing the required minimum number of organizations with which every organization must be connected to five results in a k-5 subnetwork of 70 organizations that also includes the Business Roundtable, as well as American Express, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, JPMorgan Chase Bank, Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and Wells Fargo Bank. This k-5 subnetwork encompasses 30.0% of the corporate community.
The complete findings for the ascending levels of the nested subnetworks for both 1935-1936 and 2010-2011 are presented in Table 4. The table can be read from the top down to see how the most central subnetwork in the overall network gradually expands to include the whole network, or from the bottom up to see how the entire set of organizations that comprise the corporate community in each of the two eras gradually decreases to smaller and more densely connected subnetworks.
In addition to determining the extent to which the policy-oriented nonprofits are part of the innermost subnetworks in the corporate community, it is also possible to determine how central each of them is within the corporate community by using three slightly differing network measures: closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality. Although these three centrality measures are highly correlated, in the range of 0.70 to 0.95 in this study, they differ conceptually, and each is therefore potentially useful for different substantive reasons. The first of the three, "closeness," is defined as the reciprocal of the average number of steps (by means of director interlocks) along the shortest paths between an organization and every other organization in the corporate community. Since closeness measures each organization's position within a fully connected network, it is of theoretical importance in this study because it can indicate the extent to which one or more of the policy-oriented nonprofits are in a position to contribute towards social and policy cohesion within the corporate community as a whole.
The second centrality measure, "betweenness," is defined as the sum of the fraction of shortest paths from each organization to every other organization that includes the particular organization as a step in the path. Those organizations that are included in the largest number of short paths to other organizations in the corporate community score the highest in betweenness centrality. This measure is theoretically useful for the purposes of this article because it measures the potentially integrative impact of the nonprofits on the corporate community insofar so they connect otherwise more isolated clusters.
The third centrality measure, eigenvector centrality, is based on the extent to which any given organization is connected to other organizations that have a large number of connections. Eigenvector centrality is important because it reveals the extent to which each policy-oriented nonprofit is connected to a large number of highly connected corporations. In addition, this centrality measure makes it possible to compare the results of this study with earlier studies that relied primarily or exclusively on eigenvector centrality (Moore et al., 2002; Salzman & Domhoff, 1983).
For the most part, the closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality rankings for 1935-1936 are very consistent with the k-8 results in that all four of the nonprofits in that large k-core — the Business Advisory Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation — are also in the top 50 on closeness and eigenvector centrality, and two of the four — the Business Advisory Council and the Rockefeller Foundation — are in the top 50 on betweenness. In particular, the Business Advisory Council, which was deeply involved in several pieces of New Deal legislation (Domhoff, 2020; McQuaid, 1976, 1979), ranks very high on closeness (No. 23) and betweenness (No. 24), and the Council on Foreign Relations is ranked No. 18 on eigenvector centrality.
The Brookings Institution, which was in the k-7 subnetwork along with 111 other organizations for 1935-1936, was also at about the same level on the centrality measures — No. 102 on closeness, No. 106 on eigenvector centrality, and No. 155 on betweenness. In the case of the National Association of Manufacturers, which was the lowest-ranking nonprofit on the k-core measure presented in Table 4, it also had very low rankings on closeness (No. 173) and eigenvector centrality (No. 182). However, it had a much higher ranking on betweenness (No. 59), which suggests it may have had the kind of integrative role among the smaller companies in the corporate community that would be expected for a policy-discussion nonprofit that often stated its extremely conservative policy positions vigorously during the 1930s (Burch, 1973). The complete findings for the six policy-oriented nonprofits on closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality for 1935-1936 are presented in Table 5.
# of directors | closeness rank | betweenness rank | eigenvector rank | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | 1936 | 2011 | |
BAC/BRT | 14 | 18 | 23 | 1 | 24 | 2 | 42 | 3 |
Nat’l Assn. of Manufacturers | 16 | 24 | 173 | 115 | 59 | 142 | 182 | 95 |
Council on Foreign Relations | 25 | 37 | 39 | 4 | 92 | 12 | 18 | 4 |
Brookings Institution | 14 | 49 | 102 | 2 | 155 | 1 | 106 | 1 |
Rockefeller Foundation | 28 | 25 | 28 | 199 | 36 | 199 | 30 | 193 |
Carnegie Corporation | 17 | 24 | 50 | 147 | 107 | 176 | 38 | 137 |
The results on closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality for 2010-2011 are even more than consistent with the k-core findings. They are striking in suggesting even greater centrality and an even larger integrative role for three of the policy-oriented nonprofits — the Business Roundtable, The Brookings Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations — compared to 1935-1936. The Business Roundtable ranks No. 1 on closeness, No. 2 on betweenness, and No. 3 on eigenvector centrality, and The Brookings Institution is No. 1 on both betweenness and on eigenvector centrality, and No. 2 on closeness. The Council on Foreign Relations is also more central, ranking No. 4 on both closeness and eigenvector centrality, and No. 12 on betweenness. As for the National Association of Manufacturers, it is in the middle of the rankings on closeness (No. 115), betweenness (No. 142), and eigenvector centrality (No. 95). The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation are on the periphery, as shown by their low rankings in Table 5.
As these various results indicate, the six policy-oriented nonprofits included in this study were integrated into the corporate community in both 1935-1936 and 2010-2011. This was especially the case for three of the policy-discussion groups (the Business Advisory Council in 1935-1936, the Business Roundtable in 2010-2011, and the Council on Foreign Relations in both eras). However, the remaining policy-discussion group, the National Association of Manufacturers, tended to be in or near the middle in both 1935-1936 and 2010-2011, as it also was in the aforementioned study of the 1970 dataset using the eigenvector centrality measure (Salzman & Domhoff, 1983, p. 211, Table 5). Unlike the policy-discussion groups, whose centrality (or lack thereof) was somewhat similar in 1935-1936 and 2010-2011, the two foundations (Carnegie and Rockefeller) moved from relatively high centrality scores in 1935-1936 to marginal positions in 2010-2011. This transition most likely occurred after 1970, as indicated by the fact that the Rockefeller Foundation ranked No. 10 and the Carnegie Corporation ranked No. 61 on eigenvector centrality in the 1970 dataset (Salzman & Domhoff, 1983, p. 211, Table 5). This inference is supported by studies showing that the boards of these foundations consisted in large part of corporate directors from the 1970s to the early 2000s, after which there was an increase in leaders of other American nonprofits and in business leaders from other countries (Domhoff, 1998, p. 131, Table 4.1; 2010, pp. 91-92).
Then, too, the think tank used in this study, The Brookings Institution, which was in the second-largest k-core in 1935-1936, along with 111 other organizations, moved into the most central subnetwork in 2010-2011 and rose very dramatically in the centrality rankings as well. The movement of The Brookings Institution toward the center is first indicated in the 1970 dataset, when it ranked No. 42 on eigenvector centrality, which is far higher than its ranking on this measure in 1935-1936 (No. 106), but far lower than its eigenvector ranking in 2010-2011 (No. 1) (Salzman & Domhoff, 1983, p. 211, Table 5). By 1997, it was also among the 10 most-central organizations on eigenvector centrality in the study that included 100 corporations and numerous charitable, civic, and cultural organizations (Moore et al., 2002, p. 737, Table 2).
More generally, the changes in centrality for several of the policy-oriented nonprofits reveal that both the corporate network, and the place of nonprofits within it, evolve over time. These changes support several earlier examples of how the policy-planning capability within the corporate community adapts to shifting circumstances (Domhoff, 2013, 2020).
The "inner circle" (recall that it consists of individuals in the corporate leadership group who sit on two or more corporate boards in the corporate community) provides another angle from which to examine the position and potential role of policy-oriented nonprofits in the corporate community, and the claim that the corporate community became fractured on policy issues due to a decline in the network centrality of banks (Chu & Davis, 2016; Davis & Mizruchi, 1999; Mizruchi, 2013). In this regard, it is useful by way of comparison to examine the extent to which members of the inner circle are directors of a bank, or either directors or members of at least one of the policy-planning organizations in the corporate community. (The analyses that follow are based on descriptive statistics, not network analysis.)
There were 476 members of the inner circle in 1935-1936, which is 19.4% of all corporate directors for that year; in 2010-2011 there were 409 inner-circle members, or 18.9% of all corporate directors. These findings are within the range of 15-20% that has been found in earlier studies (Murray & Jordan, 2019). Reflecting the decline in the magnitude of connectivity of the banks in the 2010-2011 dataset, and the tendency towards smaller bank boards, the 56.1% of the inner circle who sat on at least one bank board in 1935-1936 had shrunk to only 19.6% in 2010-2011, a decline of almost two-thirds. By way of contrast, the percentage of inner-circle directors who were members or directors of a nonprofit increased from 15.5% to 24.2% between 1935-1936 and 2010-2011, a substantial increase. These findings are presented in Table 6.
1935-1936 (n=476) | 2010-2011 (n=409) | p* | |
Inner Circle directors who serve on a bank board | 56.1% | 19.6% | <.001 |
Inner Circle directors who are directors or members of a policy-oriented nonprofit | 15.5% | 24.2% | <.001 |
The pervasiveness of the policy-oriented nonprofits within the corporate community as a whole — not just in the inner circle of the corporate leadership group — can be determined by examining the extent to which the interconnected corporations in the main component include at least one director or member of at least one of the six nonprofits on their board of directors. This analysis shows that members and directors of one or more of the six nonprofits were on the boards of 60% of the corporations in 1935-1936, and 77% in 2010-2011. This figure also can be calculated for individual nonprofits. The Council on Foreign Relations, whose large membership included 122 corporate directors in 1935-1936 and 190 corporate directors in 2010-2011, was connected to almost half of the corporate boards in the main component in 1935-1936, and close to 60% in 2010-2011. Similarly, 118 of the 122 members of the Business Roundtable sat on at least one corporate board in 2010-2011, collectively representing more than half of the top corporate boards. These and other findings are presented in Table 7.
1935-1936 (n=476) | 2010-2011 (n=409) | p* | |
Linked to the policy-planning network | 60.3% | 77.3% | <.001 |
Linked to the Council on Foreign Relations | 49.8% | 58.2% | .08 |
Linked to the BAC (1935-36) or BRT (2010-11) | 20.1% | 52.3% | <.001 |
Linked to the Nat'l Association of Manufacturers | 10.5% | 5.9% | .08 |
Linked to the Brookings Institution | 2.3% | 12.7% | <.001 |
Linked to the Rockefeller Foundation or Carnegie Corporation | 10.0% | 1.4% | <.001 |
The results in this subsection raise further doubts about the role of bank boards in developing policy consensus within the corporate community, contrary to the emphasis placed on them by fractured-elite theorists (Chu & Davis, 2016; Davis & Mizruchi, 1999; Mizruchi, 2013, Chap. 5). At the same time, they support the argument and evidence provided by Murray and Jordan (2019, p. 1), who conclude that "the inner circle was still the primary organizing group" for the corporate community in 2010-2011, and that the policy-oriented nonprofits were by then an even more integral part of the inner circle than in the past. However, to repeat another earlier point, this article makes no claim that the general membership of the three policy-discussion nonprofits makes any contribution to the social cohesion within the corporate community that was discussed earlier in the article. Instead, here we emphasize that the widespread overlap between the nonprofits and corporate boards due to the members of the three policy-discussion nonprofits means that the viewpoints that develop within the policy-discussion nonprofits can be disseminated throughout the corporate community.
As stressed in the section on earlier studies of corporate networks, there are limitations to network studies as windows into the corporate community. These limitations may be especially relevant in comparing the corporate network in the United States across long periods of time because a range of factors may influence network structures. They include the rise of new business sectors, merger movements, new legislative constraints, and the rise of social movements that influence business practices and cultural norms around diversity and inclusion. Nevertheless, the network data in the present study verify that since at least the mid-1930s the leadership of the largest corporations in the United States comprise a corporate community connected not only by board interlocks, but by several policy-oriented nonprofits.
The innumerable face-to-face meetings of different corporate directors at the board meetings of corporations and policy-oriented nonprofits demonstrate that the corporate community has ample opportunities to develop the social cohesion necessary to facilitate policy cohesion. The findings based on those corporate directors who are simply members of the policy discussion groups, meanwhile, reveal that the involvement of corporate directors in these organizations is pervasive, suggesting there are numerous opportunities for views developed within the policy-oriented nonprofits to be disseminated throughout the corporate community. Moreover, as briefly overviewed in the Introduction, there is considerable case-study and quantitative evidence that the nonprofit organizations included in this study have been highly effective in shaping legislative outcomes (e.g., Domhoff, 2020, 2022, Chap. 4; Dreiling and Darves, 2016; Luther-Davies et al., 2022; Useem, 1980, 1984).
The presence and effectiveness of policy-oriented nonprofits within the corporate community for at least the past 87 years raises doubts, first, about the longstanding claim that the American corporate community has never possessed the capacity to formulate general policies of common concern (e.g., Heinz et al., 1993; Heinz et al., 1990; McConnell, 1966). Theorists arguing from this perspective have tended to focus on the trade associations and lobbying firms that are indeed highly successful in government policy arenas on specific narrow issues of concern to one or another of the numerous business sectors, but they have usually not considered the role of the policy-oriented nonprofit organizations in the corporate community.
Similarly, the findings raise doubts about the conclusion that the corporate community has lost its policy-influencing capacity due to the decline in bank centrality, as well as the decline in the general connectivity of the corporate network, which purportedly led to a fracturing of the corporate elite on large-scale policy issues (Chu & Davis, 2016; Davis & Mizruchi, 1999; Mizruchi, 2013, Chap. 5). Contrary to this conclusion, there is clear evidence that policy-oriented nonprofits were the site of policy discussions in the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as in the mid-1930s. On the other hand, there is no evidence that general policy discussions took place at bank boards, or that any consensus on societal-level issues reached in such meetings was then disseminated throughout the corporate community via interlocking directors. Instead, the evidence for the importance of bank boards with regard to policy issues primarily concerns the numerous cases in which their members rejected mergers or resisted hostile takeover attempts of corporations they supported (Mintz & Schwartz, 1985, p. 77, Table 4.1). Similarly, the evidence that exists for the influence of individual corporations on other corporations only involves narrow policy issues that are of concern within the corporate community, such as the adoption of rules that make takeovers difficult (Davis, 1991). There is some evidence that linked corporations may give donations to the same candidates in elections (Burris, 2010; Mizruchi, 1992, 1996), but political donations to specific candidates are not evidence for the development of proposals relating to policy preferences on societal issues of importance to corporations in general.
An additional point should be noted with regard to the general decline in inter-corporate links noted here and in previous studies, which is emphasized by fractured-elite theorists. A significant part of the decline in network connectivity that began early in the twenty-first century was due to the decline in directors with five or more directorships, who are "disproportionately consequential in their effect on the structure of the network" in terms of its connectivity (Chu & Davis, 2016, p. 718). In stressing this decline, fractured-elite theorists overlooked the fact that there had been a similar decline in corporate directors with six or more board memberships from 27 in 1917 to zero in 1974 (Mizruchi, 1982, p. 107). Thus, the subsequent, post-1975 increase in levels of connectivity that continued into the 1990s was likely due in good part to exogenous factors, such as the pressures generated by the civil rights and feminist movements to appoint non-traditional directors, who tended to sit on two or more corporate boards (Ghiloni, 1984; Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 1998, 2018).
Similarly, the decline in directors with five or more board memberships in the early 2000s is also largely attributable to factors outside the corporate community. First, changes in the laws governing corporations in 2002 required greater due diligence on the part of directors, leading those with multiple directorships to limit their board directorships (Withers et al., 2018, p. 57). Second, the efforts by corporate watchdog groups to limit directors to no more than four directorships brought in new directors who had not previously held corporate directorships, and at the same time put pressure on those with multiple directorships to drop some board memberships, as noted by two fractured-elite theorists (Chu & Davis, 2016, p. 750).
The differences between the corporate community in 1935-1936 and 2010-2011 are encapsulated in a comparison of the boards of directors of two large commercial banks in the mid-1930s, J. P. Morgan & Company and Chase National Bank, with the board of directors of the largest bank in the United States in 2010-2011, JPMorgan Chase Bank. At J. P. Morgan in 1935-1936, 15 of the 17 directors held seats on 21 other corporate boards. In terms of involvement with policy-oriented nonprofits, one director also was a director of both the Carnegie Corporation and the Council on Foreign Relations. In the case of Chase, 23 of its 25 directors held seats on 33 other corporate boards. In addition, two of its directors were directors of the Rockefeller Foundation and still another was a director of the Carnegie Corporation.
By 2010-2011, the merger of J. P. Morgan and Chase National in 2000 had created JPMorgan Chase, which also had absorbed five other large banks that were among the 250 largest corporations in 1935-1936, four in New York and one in Chicago (e.g., Murray and Jordan, 2019, p. 47, Table 14). The board of this extremely large bank consisted of only 11 people, eight of whom provided connections to only 11 other corporations. This is a dramatic decline from the 15 J. P. Morgan directors who sat on 21 other corporate boards and the 23 Chase National directors who were directors of 33 other corporations in 1935-1936. In 2010-2011, five of the 11 directors had one other board seat besides their position at JPMorgan Chase, and two had two other board seats. The sole member with three other board seats was an African-American minister who served in Congress for 12 years, and then resigned to become the president of the United Negro College Fund in 1991. The CEO was on no other corporate boards than that of JPMorgan Chase, but was a leader at the Business Roundtable, as was one other JPMorgan Chase director. In addition, two other JPMorgan Chase directors were directors of The Brookings Institution. Based on this brief accounting, it can be seen that the merged bank is emblematic of the ties that existed between large corporations and the most central policy-oriented nonprofits in 2010-2011. The merged bank is also emblematic of the general reason why there is less connectivity among corporations in 2010-2011 than in 1935-1936. The corporations in 2010-2011 have smaller boards of directors, and their members tend to have three or fewer affiliations with other corporations.
As this comparison of J. P. Morgan and Chase National in 1935-1936 with JPMorgan Chase in 2010-2011 illustrates, and as the overall results of this study systematically demonstrate, bank boards are not necessary for the creation of corporate leadership groups that involve themselves in public-policy issues. However, the researchers who emphasized bank centrality did correctly find that the directors of banks were over-represented in the inner circle throughout most of the twentieth century (e.g., Mintz and Schwartz, 1981, 1985; Mizruchi, 1982). In effect, these researchers were focused on many of the relevant leaders within the corporate community in the years that they studied. However, some of them subsequently minimized or overlooked the importance of the policy-oriented nonprofits when they incorrectly claimed that the decline in bank centrality inevitably led to a decline in policy cohesion (e.g., Chu and Davis, 2016; Davis & Mizruchi, 1999; Mizruchi, 2013).
The findings presented in this article on the inclusion, centrality, and effectiveness of the policy-oriented nonprofits within the American corporate community since at least the 1930s provide the basis for a reconsideration of theories claiming that large corporations do not have the cohesiveness and capability to develop shared policy positions. Such theories overlook the important role that foundations, think tanks and policy-discussion groups have within the corporate community. Financial and membership links among these three types of organizations create an institutional framework within the corporate community that supports a policy-planning process. Foundations provide financial support for corporate-friendly policy studies, and think tanks provide a focused work space for experts to exchange information and ideas on a wide range of policy issues (Medvetz, 2012b). The various policy ideas are then discussed within committees and groups supported by the large policy-discussion groups, such as the Business Roundtable and the Council on Foreign Relations, which are designed to disseminate policy ideas and positions.
At the same time, there is a network of trade associations, lobbying firms, and advocacy groups, which supports a special-interest process that furthers the more narrow and short-term interests of specific corporations and business sectors. The importance of this special-interest process is demonstrated by the many studies that reveal exactly how successful trade-association officials and hired lobbyists are in shaping the agendas and policy solutions that are considered by the Congressional committees, departments of the executive branch, and regulatory agencies of concern to them (e.g., Baumgartner et al., 2009; Gilens and Page, 2014; Heinz et al., 1990; McConnell, 1966; Schlozman et al., 2012).
The new findings and analyses in this article suggest new directions that political sociologists and political scientists could take in developing a more complete picture of corporate power in the United States in the mid-2020s. These new directions could involve carefully tracking the unfolding daily activities of one or more of the policy-oriented nonprofits over a period of the next few years; carrying out content analyses of their new publications; coding the for-or-against positions their spokespersons take in testimony before Congressional committees; tracing the movement of their members into and out of appointed government positions; and conducting interviews with their leaders and staff. Such an approach could make it possible to produce many theoretically informed studies of the direction that the most powerful currents in the corporate community are moving in the face of accelerating climate change, increasing social divisions on a range of highly charged social issues, and a rapidly changing economic environment.
Several different policy-oriented nonprofits provide good starting points for such studies, depending upon the issues of primary concern to the researchers who might carry them out. However, given the findings in this article concerning the Business Roundtable as one of the largest, most central, and most successful policy-discussion groups in the corporate community since 1975, it may provide the most useful entry point into studying the future that the American corporate community is determined to create.
Allen, M. P. (1974). The structure of interorganizational elite cooptation: Interlocking corporate directorates. American Sociological Review, 39, 393-406. doi:10.2307/2094297
Allen, M. P. (1978a). Continuity and change within the core corporate elite. Sociological Quarterly, 19, 510-521. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1978.tb01195.x
Allen, M. P. (1978b). Economic interest groups and the corporate elite structure. Social Science Quarterly, 58(4), 597-615.
Allen, M. P. (1982). The identification of interlock groups in large corporate networks: Convergent validation using divergent techniques. Social Networks, 4, 349-366. doi:10.1016/0378-8733(82)90018-1
Amenta, E. (1998). Bold relief: Institutional politics and the origins of modern American social policy. Princeton University Press.
Baltzell, E. D. (1958). Philadelphia gentlemen: The making of a national upper class. Free Press.
Barnes, R. C. (2017). Structural redundancy and multiplicity within networks of U.S. corporate directors. Critical Sociology, 43, 37-57. doi:10.1177/0896920515580177
Barnes, R. C. (2023, June 29). Interlocking directorates among the Fortune 500, policy planning organizations and conservative think tanks during the Trump Administration. Annual Meetings of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, Portland, OR.
Baumgartner, F., Berry, J. M., Hojnacki, D., Kimball, D., & Leech, B. (2009). Lobbying and policy change: Who wins, who loses, and why. University of Chicago Press.
Bonacich, P. (1972). Technique for analyzing overlapping memberships. In H. Costner (Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 176-185). Jossey-Bass.
Bonds, E. (2016). Beyond denialism: Think tank approaches to climate change. Sociology Compass, 10, 306-317. doi:10.1111/soc4.12361
Breiger, R. L. (1974). The duality of persons and groups. Social Forces, 53, 181-190. doi:10.2307/2576011
Brownstein, R., & Easton, N. (1983). Reagan's ruling class: Portraits of the president's top one hundred officials. Pantheon Books.
Buchnea, E., Tilba, A., & Wilson, J. (2020). British corporate networks 1976-2010: Extending the study of finance-industry relationships. Business History Review, 62, 1027-1057. doi:10.1080/00076791.2018.1512096
Bulmer, M., & Bulmer, J. (1981). Philanthropy and social science in the 1920s: Beardsley Ruml and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, 1922-29. Minerva, 19, 347-407. doi:10.1007/BF02192822
Bunting, D. (1983). Origins of the American corporate network. Social Science History, 7, 129-142. doi:10.2307/1170836
Bunting, D. (1987). The rise of large American corporations, 1889-1919. Garland.
Burch, P. (1973). The NAM as an interest group. Politics and Society, 4, 100-105. doi:10.1177/003232927300400105
Burch, P. (1980). Elites in American history: The New Deal to the Carter administration (3 vol.). Holmes & Meier.
Burch, P. (1983). The American Establishment: Its historical development and major economic components. In P. Zarembka (Ed.), Research in Political Economy (6 vol., pp. 83-156). JAI Press.
Burris, V. (1992). Elite policy-planning networks in the United States. Research in Politics and Society, 4, 111-134.
Burris, V. (2008). The interlock structure of the policy-planning network and the right turn in U.S. state policy. Research in Political Sociology, 17, 3-42. doi:10.1016/S0895-9935(08)17002-4
Burris, V. (2010). Corporations, capitalists, and campaign finance. In K. Leicht, & J. C. Jenkins (Eds.), Handbook of politics: State and society in global perspective (pp. 247-262). Springer Publishing.
Business Roundtable (2007). Business Roundtable unveils principles for health care reform. http://businessroundtable.org/
Carroll, W., Fennema, M., & Heemskerk, E. M. (2010). Constituting corporate Europe: A study of elite social organization. Antipode, 42, 811-843. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00777.x
Cartwright, D., & Zander, A. F. (Eds.). (1968). Group dynamics: Research and theory. Harper and Row.
Cater, D. (1964). Power in Washington. Random House.
Chu, J., & Davis, G. F. (2016). Who killed the Inner Circle? The decline of the American corporate interlock network. American Journal of Sociology, 122, 714-754. doi:10.1086/688650
Collins, R. M. (1981). The business response to Keynes, 1929-1964. Columbia University Press.
Daalder, I., & Lindsay, J. (2003). America unbound. The Brookings Institution.
Dalzell, R. F. (1987). Enterprising elite: The Boston Associates and the world they made. Harvard University Press.
Davis, G. F. (1991). Agents without principles? The spread of the poison pill through the intercorporate network. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 583-613. doi:10.2307/2393275
Davis, G. F., & Mizruchi, M. (1999, June). The money center cannot hold: Commercial banks in the U.S. system of corporate governance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 215212.
Davis, G. F., Yoo, M., & Baker, W. (2002). The small world of the American corporate elite, 1982-2001. Strategic Organization, 1(3), 301-326. doi:10.1177/14761270030013002
Domhoff, G. W. (1970). The higher circles. Random House.
Domhoff, G. W. (1974). The Bohemian Grove and other retreats: A study in ruling-class cohesiveness. Harper & Row. http://whorulesamerica.net/
Domhoff, G. W. (1998). Who rules America? Power and politics in the year 2000. Mayfield Publishing Company.
Domhoff, G. W. (2010). Who rules America? Challenges to corporate and class dominance. McGraw-Hill.
Domhoff, G. W. (2013). The myth of liberal ascendancy: Corporate dominance from the Great Depression to the Great Recession. Paradigm Publishers.
Domhoff, G. W. (2020). The corporate rich and the power elite in the twentieth century: How they won, why liberals and labor lost. Routledge. http://whorulesamerica.net/the_corporate_rich.html to download a copy.
Domhoff, G. W. (2022). Who rules America? The corporate rich, white nationalist Republicans, and inclusionary Democrats in the 2020s. (Updated in 2023 with a new Prologue.) Routledge.
Domhoff, G. W., & Webber, M. J. (2011). Class and power in the New Deal: Corporate moderates, Southern Democrats, and the liberal-labor coalition. Stanford University Press.
Dreiling, M., & Darves, D. (2016). Agents of neoliberal globalization: Corporate networks, state structures and trade policy. Cambridge University Press.
Eakins, D. (1966). The development of corporate liberal policy research in the United States, 1885-1965 [Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin]. Madison.
Eitzen, D. S., Jung, M. A., & Purdy, D. A. (1982). Organizational linkages among the inner group of the capitalist class. Sociological Focus, 15, 179-189. doi:10.1080/00380237.1982.10570415
Farhang, S., & Katznelson, I. (2005). The Southern imposition: Congress and labor in the New Deal and Fair Deal. Studies in American Political Development, 19, 1-30. doi:10.1017/S0898588X05000015
Fennema, M., & Heemskerk, E. M. (2017). When theory meets methods: The naissance of computer assisted corporate interlock research. Global Networks, Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Fisher, D. (1993). Fundamental development of the social sciences: Rockefeller philanthropy and the United States Social Science Research Council. University of Michigan Press.
Ghiloni, B. W. (1984). Women on corporate boards. Business and Society Review, 51, 86-96.
Ghiloni, B. W. (1986). New women of power: An examination of the ruling class model of domination [Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz].
Gilens, M., & Page, B. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12, 564-581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595
Gogel, R., & Koenig, T. (1981). Commercial banks, interlocking directorates and economic power: An analysis of the primary metals industry. Social Problems, 29(2), 117-128. doi:10.2307/800418
Green, M., & Buchsbaum, A. (1980). The corporate lobbies: Political profiles of the Business Roundtable & the Chamber of Commerce. Public Citizen.
Gross, J. A. (1974). The making of the National Labor Relations Board. State University of New York Press.
Gross, J. A. (1995). Broken promise: The subversion of U.S. labor relations policy. Temple University Press.
Hacker, J., & Pierson, P. (2002). Business power and social policy: Employers and the formation of the American welfare state. Politics & Society, 30, 277-325. doi:10.1177/0032329202030002004
Heinz, J. P., Laumann, E. O., Salisbury, R. H., & Nelson, R. L. (1990). Inner circles or hollow cores? Elite networks in national policy systems. Journal of Politics, 52(2), 356-390. doi:10.2307/2131898
Heinz, J. P., Laumann, E. O., Nelson, R. L., & Salisbury, R. H. (1993). The hollow core: Private interests in national policy making. Harvard University Press.
Hirsch, P. M. (1982). Network data versus personal accounts: The normative culture of interlocking directorates Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, CA.
Huijzer, M. J., & Heemskerk, E. M. (2021). Delineating the corporate elite: Inquiring the boundaries and composition of interlocking directorate networks. Global Networks, 21, 791-820. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12316. doi:10.1111/glob.12316
Johnston, D. W., & Johnston, F. P. (2013). Joining together: Group theory and group skills (11th ed.). Pearson.
Karl, B. D., & Katz, S. N. (1987). Foundations and ruling class elites. Daedalus, 116(1), 1-40.
Kendall, D. (2002). The power of good deeds: Privileged women and the social reproduction of class. Rowman & Littlefield.
Koenig, T., & Gogel, R. (1981). Interlocking corporate directorships as a social network. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 40(1), 37-50.
Kraft, J. (1958). July). School for statesmen. Harper's Magazine, 60-68.
Lagemann, E. (1989). The politics of knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, philanthropy, and public policy. Wesleyan University Press.
Larsen, A. G., & Ellersgaard, C. H. (2017). Identifying power elites: k-cores in heterogeneous affiliation networks. Social Networks, 50, 55-69. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2017.03.009
Linder, M. (1999). Wars of attrition: Vietnam, the Business Roundtable, and the decline of construction unions. Fanpihua Press.
Lott, A., & Lott, B. (1965). Group cohesiveness as interpersonal attraction. Psychological Bulletin, 64, 259-309. doi:10.1037/h0022386
Luther-Davies, P., Doniec, K., Lavallee, J. P., Domhoff, G. W., & King, L. P. (2022). Corporate political power and US foreign policy, 1981-2002: The role of the policy-planning network. Theory and Society, 51, 629-652. doi:10.1007/s11186-022-09475-3
Mace, M. (1971). Directors: Myth and reality. Harvard University Press.
Mann, D. (2008). Understanding society: A survey of modern social theory. Oxford University Press.
Mayer, F. (1998). Interpreting NAFTA: The science and art of political analysis. Columbia University Press.
McCann, J. (2007). Think tanks and policy advice in the US: Academics, advisors and advocates. Routledge.
McConnell, G. (1966). Private power and American democracy. Knopf.
McQuaid, K. (1976). The Business Advisory Council in the Department of Commerce, 1933-1961. Research in Economic History, 1, 171-197.
McQuaid, K. (1979). The frustration of corporate revival in the early New Deal. Historian, 41, 682-704. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1979.tb00564.x
Medvetz, T. (2012a). Murky power: Think tanks as boundary organizations. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 34, 113-133. doi:10.1108/S0733-558X(2012)0000034007
Medvetz, T. (2012b). Think tanks in America. University of Chicago Press.
Merton, R. (1968). Social theory and social structure. Free Press.
Mintz, B. (2018). Who Rules America? And the policy-planning network: The case of venture philanthropy. In G. W. Domhoff (Ed.), Studying the power elite: Fifty years of Who Rules America? (pp. 116-125). Routledge.
Mintz, B., & Schwartz, M. (1981). The structure of intercorporate unity in American business. Social Problems, 29(2), 87-103. doi:10.2307/800416
Mintz, B., & Schwartz, M. (1985). The power structure of American business. University of Chicago Press.
Mizruchi, M. (1982). The American corporate network, 1904-1974. Sage Publications.
Mizruchi, M. (1992). The structure of corporate political action: Interfirm relations and their consequences. Harvard University Press.
Mizruchi, M. (1996). What do interlocks do? An analysis, critique, and assessment of research on interlocking directorates. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 271-298. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.271
Mizruchi, M. (2013). The fracturing of the American corporate elite. Harvard University Press.
Mizruchi, M., & Bunting, D. (1981). Influence in corporate networks: An examination of four measures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(3), 475-489. doi:10.2307/2392519
Moore, G., Sobieraj, S., Whitt, J. A., Mayorova, O., & Beaulieu, D. (2002). Elite interlocks in three U.S. sectors: Nonprofit, corporate, and government. Social Science Quarterly, 83, 726-744. doi:10.1111/1540-6237.00111
Murray, J. (2017). Interlock globally, act domestically: Corporate political unity in the 21st century. American Journal of Sociology, 123, 243-279.
Murray, J. (2016, May 9). Occupied by Wall Street. Annual Meetings of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, Anaheim, CA.
Murray, J., & Jordan, M. L. (2019). Sources of continued corporate dominance. Class Race and Corporate Power, 7(2), 1-59. https://doi.org/10.25148/CRCP.7.2.008333. doi:10.25148/CRCP.7.2.008333
National Resources Committee. (1939). The structure of the American economy Part 1 Basic characteristics: A report prepared by the Industrial Section. U.S. Government Printing Office.
Nylen, L. (2022). Justice Department uses 1914 law to keep directors from serving on competing Boards. Bloomberg. Retrieved October 19, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-19/doj-invokes-1914-law-against-serving-on-competing-corporate-boards
Orloff, A. (1993). The politics of pensions: A comparative analysis of Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1880-1940. University of Wisconsin Press.
Ostrander, S. A. (1987). Elite domination in private social agencies: How it happens and how it is challenged. In G. W. Domhoff, & T. Dye (Eds.), Power elites and organizations (pp. 85-102). Sage.
Palmer, D. (1983). Interpreting corporate interlocks from broken ties. Social Science History, 7, 217-231. doi:10.2307/1170841
Peschek, J. (1987). Policy-planning organizations: Elite agendas and America's rightward turn. Temple University Press.
Peschek, J. (2018). The policy-planning network, class dominance, and the challenge to political science. In G. W. Domhoff (Ed.), Studying the power elite: Fifty years of Who Rules America? (pp. 105-115). Routledge.
Rossier, T., Ellersgaard, C. H., Larsen, A. G., & Lunding, J. A. (2022). From integrated to fragmented elites. The core of Swiss elite networks 1910-2015. British Journal of Sociology, 73, 315-335. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12929
Rowan, H. (1964). The free enterprisers: Kennedy, Johnson, and the business establishment. G.P Putman's Sons.
Roy, W. G. (1983). Interlocking directorates and the corporate revolution. Social Science History, 7, 143-164. doi:10.2307/1170837
Roy, W. G. (1997). Socializing capital: The rise of the large industrial corporation in America. Princeton University Press.
Salzman, H., & Domhoff, G. W. (1983). Nonprofit organizations and the corporate community. Social Science History, 7, 205-216. doi:10.2307/1170840
Schlozman, K., Verba, S., & Brady, H. (2012). The unheavenly chorus: Unequal political voice and the broken promise of American democracy. Princeton University Press.
Schulzinger, R. (1984). The wise men of foreign affairs: The history of the Council on Foreign Relations. Columbia University Press.
Sklar, H., & Lawrence, R. (1981). Who's who in the Reagan Administration. South End.
Staples, C. (2012). The Business Roundtable. In G. Murray, & J. Scott (Eds.), Financial elites and transnational business: Who rules the world? (pp. 100-123). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Turner, J. C. (1991). Social influence. Cengage Learning.
Useem, M. (1980). Which business leaders help govern? In G. W. Domhoff (Ed.), Power structure research (pp. 199-225). Sage.
Useem, M. (1984). The inner circle: Large corporations and the rise of business political activity in the U.S. and U.K. Oxford University Press.
Valeeva, D., Heemskerk, E. M., & Takes, F. W. (2020). The duality of firms and directors in board interlock networks: A relational event modeling approach. Social Networks, 62, 68-79. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2020.02.009
van Apeldoorn, B., & de Graaf, N. (2016). American grand strategy and corporate elite networks: The open door since the end of the Cold War. Routledge.
van Apeldoorn, B., Veselinovič, J., & de Graaf, N. (2023). Trump and the remaking of American grand strategy: The shift from open door globalism to economic nationalism. Palgrave MacMillan.
Waterhouse, B. (2014). Lobbying America: The politics of business from Nixon to NAFTA. Princeton Univesity Press.
Watts, D., & Strogatz, S. (1998). Collective dynamics of small world networks. Nature, 393, 440-442. doi:10.1038/30918
Withers, M., Kimb, J. Y. R., & Howard, M. (2018). The evolution of the board interlock network following Sarbanes-Oxley. Social Networks, 52, 56-67. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2017.05.005
Woodall, P., Wallach, L., Roach, J., & Burnham, K. (2000). Purchasing power: The corporate-White House alliance to pass the China trade bill over the will of the American people. Public Citizen.
Zweigenhaft, R. L. (2016). The rise and fall of diversity at the top: The appointments of Fortune 500 CEOs from 2005 through 2015 WhoRulesAmerica.net: http://whorulesamerica.net/
Zweigenhaft, R. L. (2021). Diversity among Fortune 500 CEOs from 2000 to 2020: White women, Hi-tech South Asians, and economically privileged multilingual immigrants from around the world. WhoRulesAmerica.net. http://whorulesamerica.net/
Zweigenhaft, R. L., & Domhoff, G. W. (1998). Diversity in the power elite: Have women and minorities reached the top? Yale University Press.
Zweigenhaft, R. L., & Domhoff, G. W. (2018). Diversity in the power elite: Ironies and unfullfilled promises (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefied.