Politics in Corporations: Systematic Corruption with Reilly Steel

Citigroup imposes gun purchase rules stricter than most state laws. Disney fights the Florida governor over legislation. Corporations, for a decade, decided they had something to say about politics. But something else has been happening in the opposite direction: Paramount's backers called the White House when competing for a merger approval. Palantir's CEO publicly embraced the current administration while his company's federal contracts expanded. This is not corporations shaping politics — it is politics shaping corporations, rewarding loyalty and manufacturing dependence.Reilly Steel's new paper "Systematic Corruption" maps the structural logic of that second dynamic. His argument is that what looks like political pressure on business is in fact a recognisable historical pattern — one that defined much of the early American republic and that earlier generations of reformers worked hard to dismantle. The conversation covers both the diagnosis and the reform toolkit, then turns to Steel's empirical work documenting the ideological transformation of American corporate elites over the past two decades — data that helps explain why corporations moved left on social issues, and what their recent retreat tells us about the limits of ideology as a driver of corporate behaviour.Reilly Steel is Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he works at the intersection of corporate governance and political science. His article "Systematic Corruption" is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review. His empirical article "The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001–2022" was published in the American Political Science Review (2025). His article "Lobbying Against Enforcement" is forthcoming in the Yale Journal on Regulation.Matteo Gatti is Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, where he writes on corporate power, governance, and political economy. He is a Research Member of ECGI and the host of this podcast.Links:Systematic Corruption by Reilly Steel, Columbia Law Review (forthcoming)The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001–2022 by Reilly Steel, American Political Science Review (2025)Lobbying Against Enforcement by Reilly Steel, Yale Journal on Regulation (forthcoming)Separation of Parties, Not Powers by Daryl Levinson and Richard Pildes, 119 Harvard Law Review 2311 (2006)Valuing Administrative Democracy by Brian Feinstein and Daniel Walters (2025)Corporate Power and the Politics of Change by Matteo Gatti, Cambridge University Press (2025)Other Episodes:The Economics of Corporate Governing with Swarnodeep Homroy and Elisabeth Kempf - EP. 2 in Corporate Power and the Politics of Change with Matteo GattiCorporate Governing and the Role of Shareholder Primacy with Ann Lipton - EP. 4 in Corporate Power and the Politics of Change with Matteo Gatti