Volume 11, Issue 3

Would “party-centered” campaign finance laws that channel money primarily through party organizations improve American politics? Scholars have long argued that political parties are essential mediating institutions in a democracy. Yet in comparison to other democracies, American campaign finance laws have been designed to be “candidate-centered.” Constraints on political parties have also created opportunities for interest groups to engage directly in campaigns in support of favored candidates and policies. The growing presence in elections of interest groups at the expense of formal party organizations thus has potential negative implications for the functioning of democracy. This paper explains what we know about the relationship between money, campaign finance laws, and political parties, with the goal of exploring whether party-centered campaign finance laws might improve elections, representation, and governing. Importantly, it emphasizes the need for new knowledge that may help in designing new campaign finance laws.

Although many think campaign donations buy influence from legislators, scholars have difficulty determining whether and how much influence contributions actually have in the legislative process. Many studies seek to identify the influence of donors on roll-call votes; after considerable debate, most scholars have concluded that donors have little influence on these votes. What voting studies cannot detect are the important but less observable opportunities to shape legislation that occur earlier in the legislative process. I describe and critique the various methods that have been used to discern donor influence in this legislative process. I argue that donor influence can be measured by combining several of these approaches, and I illustrate this technique using work of my own which studied the influence of contributions in the 99 state legislative chambers. Features of institutional design and politics prove to determine the amount of time legislators devote to fundraising and explain much of the variation in influence among the chambers. I also discuss the extent to which contributions work in tandem with lobbying to influence the legislative process: Is the “access” or the “informational” model of lobbying correct? Finally, I examine whether campaign finance laws can lessen the influence of contributions, and discuss an agenda for future research.

These comments emphasize the contributions of Lynda Powell’s work on state-level campaign finance. That work is theoretically rich and analytically rigorous, and suggests that the context of contributing behaviors is a key variable often ignored. Logical extensions of her study suggest the need for (1) extensive, comparative, data collection, (2) additional topics of inquiry, and (3) the use of complementary approaches to better understand the role of campaign contributions in state-level politics.

The implementation and expansion of public funding programs around the US over the past decade raised the possibility of major changes in the financing of campaigns at the state and local level. Advocates claimed that these programs increased electoral competition, reduced the influence of campaign contributors and lobbyists, and changed the distribution of political power. While there was evidence of a modest increase in competitiveness, primarily through reducing the number of incumbents who ran uncontested, the longer-term pattern has shown no significant change in incumbency reelection rates, margins of victory, or legislature demographics. Claims of major policy change have also been overstated. The Supreme Court’s rejection of spending triggers for additional grant awards in Arizona Free Enterprise PAC v. Bennett makes full public funding programs less attractive, since publicly funded candidates are less able to keep pace with high-spending opponents or independent expenditures. Future research should focus on how these programs affect the way that candidates and legislators engage with the public.

This article examines what scholars know and need to know to assess the role and impact of small donors, engaging with participation theory to gauge the potential effects of technology and of public financing on the economics of mobilizing donors. As a prelude, the article reviews the evidence showing that small donors are more representative economically than those whose large contributions now dominate political finance. Second, it considers and rejects claims that they are more likely to polarize politics. Third, it reviews the role of bundling organizations, in light of the economics of contemporary communications technology. Fourth, it reviews the impact of those forms of public financing that are specifically aimed at changing the incentives for candidates to reach out to small donors, by way of tax credits and public matching funds. Finally, as a speculative conclusion, it raises important questions about which current research so far has little to say: whether activating small donors stimulates their giving of time as well as money and, if so, whether the political skills thus learned have a noticeable effect on citizen engagement over the long haul.

This article provides an overview of major research findings regarding the Internet and American political campaigns. This is still a nascent subfield, but the research community has come to general agreement on five key points: (1) at the mass behavioral level, the Internet has not changed fundamental participatory inequalities; (2) we have seen an increase in small-donor activity, and these donations tend to flow toward polarizing candidates; (3) for political campaign operations, “mundane mobilization tools” carry the largest impacts; (4) with political campaigns, the new focus on data analytics and the “culture of testing” is substantially changing resource expenditures and work routines; and (5) there is currently a clear partisan divide between how Democrats and Republicans employ digital technology for campaigning. The article also discusses the methodological challenges that separate Internet-related research from many of the more established fields of campaign finance-related research. It concludes by posing a set of research questions for the 2014 and 2016 election cycles which will likely prove fruitful.

This article argues that new media technologies are likely to elicit changes in the content, tone, and potential electoral impact of those campaign messages micro-targeted through them, with a resulting increase in the level of unaccountable, deceptive, pseudonymous campaigning. Access to data-mined information will increase the likelihood that the candidate with the larger war-chest will gain an advantage by changing the composition of the electorate. In a world of micro-targeted messaging, reporters have greater difficulty holding sponsors accountable and policing deception.

There is a long-standing scholarly literature on the electoral effects of campaign spending. Nevertheless, the academic research offers only limited guidance for policy makers interested in campaign finance reform. In part, this is because existing studies have focused narrowly on some vexing statistical issues. But it is also because political scientists have not devoted enough effort to conducting evaluation studies of how regulatory policies impact the intermediate goal of competition, let alone the ultimate policy goals of reduced corruption, increased citizen participation, and improved public policy. Consequently, there is a great need for updated and improved analyses of the treatment effect of campaign spending on political competition in a variety of electoral contexts, but an even greater need for the application of modern evaluation methods to the more basic question of whether campaign finance reforms “work” as advertised.

During the election season of 2012, the Democracy Fund asked the Campaign Finance Institute and Bipartisan Policy Center to convene a working group of scholars to recommend research priorities for funders over the next several years in the field of money and politics. Eighteen prominent scholars of political science, law, communications, and economics joined in the effort. They began with a shared premise: fundamental changes in politics, law, technology, and communications have made obsolete many of the research and policy frameworks that have guided past work. Given the depth of this change, these scholars saw the following as the most fruitful priorities for now. First, rather than focusing on individual research projects, urge funders to support creating an infrastructure of interrelated databases, many of whose key parts already exist. Second, continue looking at subjects likely to receive policy attention in the near term, including small donors and transparency. Third, generate a more detailed picture of the new campaign finance system. Finally, seek to have scholars come together across specialties to reflect on what has just occurred and where to go next, ideally on a regular basis.

This paper examines the impact of campaign spending on the 2006 vote of the Chicago City Council on a proposed living-wage ordinance for big-box retailers. It finds that some aldermen supported the ordinance, despite the strong opposition of Mayor Richard M. Daley and their own private reservations, because labor unions were preparing to spend huge sums of money to unseat aldermen who voted against the proposal. Further analysis of campaign contributions in the 2007 election indicates that spending by labor unions was indeed instrumental in defeating aldermen who opposed the ordinance. The results demonstrate that campaign spending can influence policy decisions at the local level, particularly when an interest group is capable of spending enough money to make a difference in the upcoming election.

As the Affordable Care Act is likely to persist, we should shift our attention toward actually making it work. However, this may be even more challenging than overcoming the initial political opposition. One of the most daunting problems is to make fifty-one insurance exchanges (marketplaces) 1 across the country into viable, self-sufficient, and effective entities. Consumer demographics pose a significant challenge to these marketplaces, one that may lead to their demise. Ultimately, it may be prudent to continue high-risk pools as a supplement to marketplaces in order to offer lower premiums in the marketplaces and provide an opportunity for learning. This strategy could be made acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats.