Corporate political activity budgets grew sharply and keep expanding.

Evidence

The majority of companies (54 per cent) has increased their PA budget. This finding is supported by the fact that 16 per cent of the companies have increased their budgets since 1999 by 100 to 400 per cent. For the future development of PA budgets, 58 per cent say that they will not increase their budgets further. However, over one-third of the companies have made plans to increase their budget even further, indicating an ongoing investment in CPA. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 395

Categorization

• CANDY: Sixteen percent of firms quadrupled their political-activity budget in under a decade — a punchy stat for a cocktail-party line about corporate lobbying.