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Prior studies usually examine political network effects from a relational view, and the effects of firms position in political networks has been mostly neglected. Our study argues that political position, the rank firms occupies in the administrative hierarchy, significantly affects firms' response to governmental mandates. Our results show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between political position and whether firms' comply with or defy governmental mandates. Furthermore, we identify three important contingencies relating to firm economic performance, local legal environment development and peer behavior, which moderate this curvilinear relationship. By shifting political network research from a relational to a positional view, our study adds new insights on political network effects. Furthermore, this study also contributes to institutional theory research by providing some of the first empirical evidence characterizing firms' political positions and their heterogeneous responses to government mandates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]