ABSTRACT
From the beginning and in its very essence, the corporate campaign has depended not solely on the resources of the union or other group waging it, which are likely to be quite limited in comparison with those of the target company or industry, but on mobilizing the resources of others who are ei-ther sympathetic to the advocates’ cause or can be pressed into service through secondary pressure tactics. With the exception of the media, whose role, as we shall see later, is ubiquitous, no set of institutions has been more consistently or effectively employed for these purposes than the three branches of government-executive, legislative, and judicial. Through the federal regulatory agencies, the Congress and the federal courts, as well, at times, as through their state and local counterparts, campaigns have relied on the government for information, legitimization, and pure, unadulterated pressure of a kind they are themselves incapable of generating. Willing or not and knowing or not, the government has served for many years as the partner of unions and other advocates bent on changing corporate behaviors or, in some instances, attacking the corporation per se. In this
chapter, we outline the role played by government institutions in corporate campaign strategy.
