PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Previous studies provide evidence for the mutual impact of the triangular relationship between politics, business and bridging individuals. So far, only little is known about the effects for politicians who bridge governments and corporations. Building on Burt's (1992) social capital theory, I predict that politicians who bridge governments and corporations have a significantly higher survival rate than those without bridging capital. The empirical results reveal robustly that German Federal ministers from 1949 to January 2015 with previous corporate key positions in non-political non-profit organisations or corporate executive or supervisory boards have a significantly higher survival rate than ministers without this qualification. However, German Federal ministers from 1990 to January 2015 do not significantly benefit from previous corporate key positions in terms of a higher survival rate so that the finding for the full sample is driven by the subsample from 1949 to January 1989.