Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 17, 2006

Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting

Political Contributions and Defense Contractors, and No-Bid Contracts
A Social Network Analysis

What role do political campaign contributions make in generating and maintaining political capital? Are no-bid contracts awarded to more influential defense contractors? We explore these questions by conducting a social network analysis of defense contractors and their political campaign contributions to U.S. Representatives and Senators. Using a model of political capital from Rehbein, Schuler, and Doh (2005), we operationalize network ties in terms of political contributions and the relative influence of legislators and defense contractors.