Target 16.7: Responsive, inclusive, participatory decision-making
Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Corporate money shapes who gets to participate in decision-making. Public Citizen documented 50 million dollars in corporate contributions since 2015 to state lawmakers sponsoring 245 voter-suppression bills, with 81 of the Fortune 100 among the donors. Values-congruency shareholder proposals ask companies to reconcile political spending with stated commitments on voting rights, and political spending proposals averaged 34.1 percent support in 2022. Inclusive and representative decision-making rests on electoral law, courts and civic institutions. Restrictive electoral laws are enacted with or without corporate donations, so corporate political giving is a contributor rather than a necessary obstacle. Owners can help at the margin by cutting off this funding.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated a group of institutional investors managing 11.8 billion dollars that filed 11 political spending congruency proposals for the 2022 proxy season, several of them citing donations to lawmakers who restricted voting access.
Filed and co-filed proposals asking companies to account for political donations to lawmakers and organizations backing voter restrictions.
6 campaigns on record
Account for company donations to organizations working to restrict voting.
Result: 30 percent of votes cast
Disclose the company's lobbying policies and spending, following consecutive proposals criticising donations to legislators who refused to certify the 2020 election.
With As You Sow, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General Fund
Result: 62.2 percent, a majority vote
Explain the company's donations to Texas lawmakers who supported voter suppression measures.
Result: 44 percent of votes cast
Report publicly at least once a year on the congruence of political and electioneering expenditures during the preceding year against publicly stated company values and policies.
With As You Sow, Tara Health Foundation, The Educational Foundation of America, Clean Yield Asset Management, Trillium Asset Management, Office of the Rhode Island General Treasurer, Unitarian Universalist Association
Result: not stated in source
The proposal asked Alphabet to recapitalize its share structure so that every share carries one vote, ending the dual-class structure that gives founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin outsized control.
With Boston Common Asset Management
Result: About 99.8% of Class A (non-founder) shares voted in favor, but because founder-controlled Class B super-voting shares are counted together with Class A shares, overall support was about 28.9%.
we found no documented change; Alphabet's dual-class structure remained in place because founders Page and Brin controlled over 51% of the vote while holding only about 11% of shares.
Alphabet Shareholders Overwhelmingly Support Equal Voting, CorpGov.net
The campaign asked companies to adopt 'proxy access' bylaws letting a group of shareholders who together have owned at least 3% of the company's stock for three or more years nominate up to 25% of the board directly on the company's own proxy ballot.
Result: Proxy access proposals won majority support at several target companies (for example, 71% at Netflix and 49.9% at Chipotle in 2015); by 2016, 50 of the 72 companies targeted that year had agreed to adopt proxy access.
Multiple companies adopted proxy access bylaws as a direct result of the campaign, according to the source, though Netflix's board did not implement proxy access despite the 71% vote in its favor in 2015.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.