Volume 6, Issue 1

Recent campaign finance developments raise serious questions about the viability of the entire regime of campaign finance law. While McCain-Feingold is not the source of these developments, current and future changes in campaigning and campaign finance dictate a major reconsideration of the regulatory regime.

This article argues that the campaign finance system has deteriorated under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). The system retains the vices of the former regime while jettisoning its virtues. Although successful at banning national party soft money, achieving this narrow goal has come at high cost. Significant problems remain or worsen including the time politicians spend fundraising, the unfair distribution of campaign money, and arrangements that weaken political parties and empower interest groups. Critically, public trust in the system has not changed at all since passage of BCRA. The essay closes by offering modest suggestions to improve the state of affairs.

For one-third of a century, federal campaign finance debates have been stuck in a corruption rut. Whether in Congress, FEC or the courts, most of the action has been about limiting contributions and certain expenditures. After defending the ban of soft money contributions to national political parties and questioning the effects of electioneering regulations, the article argues that whatever one's positions on these issues it is time to rethink the agenda for future research and action. Rather than focus on corruption prevention, research and policy should move to such positive goals as increasing electoral competition, candidate emergence and promoting equality through small donors and volunteers. The article concludes with initial survey research findings from an ongoing project on donor participation.

The Supreme Court has had a major impact on the development of campaign finance law. Court decisions have barred most expenditure limits, upheld contribution restrictions and disclosure requirements, and limited the kinds of electoral ads that can be subject to regulation. In the McConnell decision in 2003 the Court demonstrated a greater openness to campaign finance regulation when it upheld McCain-Feingold's soft money and issue advocacy restrictions. Since McConnell, however, the composition of the Court has changed, and in two decisions in the past two years, the new majority has been much more hostile to campaign finance limits. In particular, last year's WRTL decision significantly eroded McConnell's issue advocacy holding and opened the door to considerably more corporate and union spending in elections. Three new cases are currently moving through the judicial system, with one soon to be argued before the Supreme Court, a second pending there, and a third in the early stages of litigation. These cases have implications for contribution limits, public funding, and the fundraising restrictions and disclosure requirements that apply to independent committees. Their resolution will shape the effectiveness of current campaign law and signal the direction of the Roberts' Court's emerging campaign finance jurisprudence.

The dramatic growth in the numbers of individuals contributing to presidential candidates and the surge in total amounts being contributed has generated substantial media attention in the 2008 presidential election. Individuals are giving more, in part, because the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) raised contribution limits and encouraged "max-out" donors to contribute to party committees as well. This study compares individual contributions to presidential candidates and party committees in 1999, the year prior to the last pre-BCRA presidential election, and in the years prior to post-BCRA presidential elections.

The surge in internet fundraising in 2004 and especially in 2008 suggests that campaigns may have found a way to involve a new group of citizens in giving. Using data from an earlier 2000 survey of large and small donors, I show that internet donors are different from other small donors in interesting ways.

Despite signs from the 2004 presidential election contest pointing to a larger role for "big money" in the 2008 season, the indicia so far suggest that there is much for egalitarians to cheer. Egalitarians believe that unequal distribution of wealth should play less of a role in determining presidential election outcomes and/or the policies of the president once elected. At this point in the 2008 election season, it appears that big money is beginning to matter less, rather than more, thanks in large part to the enhanced role of the Internet in campaigning and fundraising, and especially thanks to the viability of campaigns funded substantially by small donors. Such a shift is especially important given that the United States Supreme Court has grown increasingly hostile to campaign finance regulation. The promise of small donors, rather than regulation, stands the best chance of countering the role of big money in future presidential elections.

Every two years the financing of federal elections changes, sometimes subtly and other times more dramatically, sometimes necessarily in response to new rules and other times innovatively in response to old ones. This essay discusses changes in place or afoot for the 2008 congressional elections. In the coming cycle, the new congressional majority will enjoy a significant fundraising edge, social-welfare organizations will be more engaged in political interventions, unions and corporations will re-enter the pre-election advertising scene, and lobbyist contributions will come into the sunlight. Vacancies on the Federal Election Commission will likely stifle the creativity of candidates and campaign financiers, as innovations cannot be sanctioned until a quorum is available to approve advisory opinions. The non-profit education program of the IRS may also temper the anticipated rush to shift political activity to social-welfare organizations.

This paper presents evidence and makes arguments that challenge existing assumptions about the effectiveness of BCRA as well as the nature of corporate political strategy. Borrowing from agency theory, I present an analysis of principal actors in the corporation that suggests that corporate interests are playing a far more active role in electoral politics after BCRA than previously claimed.

Has the most recent campaign finance reform failed relative to interest groups? More broadly, what's next in the realm of interest group electioneering? This paper explores the role of interest groups in two areas: as contributors to candidates and parties and as candidate and issue advocates. Overall, the numbers reported here show that direct interest group influence with candidates and parties likely declined in the wake of reform. On the other hand, recent uncertainty in the regulatory environment should foster the expansion of interest group advocacy efforts (and has already done so in this year's presidential primary elections). On this score, the attempts of reformers to reduce interest group electioneering have likely failed. Instead of concluding that such a development is bad for American elections, however, this paper argues that such discontent is misplaced.

Debates about campaign finance often point to television advertising as a major reason for the high cost of campaigning, but the debates are too rarely informed by systematic data on advertising costs. A leading source tracking campaign ads, the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), offers data about both the volume and the estimated cost of advertising being purchased. Here, we test the accuracy of CMAG cost data by comparing CMAG estimates to records we gathered directly from television stations for five competitive campaigns in the Philadelphia area in 2006. Our findings show that while CMAG is highly accurate in gauging the incidence of advertising, CMAG estimates of the cost were much higher than the actual cost. We counsel caution then in judging the cost of television advertising based on CMAG estimates.

As the 2008 Presidential campaign proceeds, calls for reform of bundling disclosure continue. Bundling permits individual funders to attract more attention from candidates by producing more funds than the contribution limit of $2,300 per election would permit. Advocates of greater regulation see bundling as an end-run around contribution limits and disclosure requirements of federal campaign finance law. Greater regulation of bundling could be the next step in the incremental but everlasting pursuit of political reform. Critics of bundling both inside and outside the Federal Election Commission (FEC) have called for additional regulations, especially in the disclosure of bundling. This essay looks at what bundling is and is not, what the law requires now, and why more regulation, even disclosure, may not be such a smart idea.

While the 2006 elections produced important gains for women's representation and power in Congress, they also exacerbated a troubling trend in American politics, the growing partisan gap. Twenty years ago, women in Congress were equally likely to be Republicans or Democrats. Today, Republican women form slightly less than 29 percent of the women in Congress. The partisan gap among women in Congress is a fairly recent, but quickly growing phenomenon in American politics, and one that has significant and disturbing implications for the descriptive and substantive representation of women, as well as the image, functioning, and policies of the major parties. This paper examines the composition of Congress and state legislatures over time and finds that several developments in American politics have contributed to the emergence and growth of the gap: a growing partisan imbalance in the congressional pipeline, the regional realignment of the parties, and the comparatively bigger gains made by non-white women in obtaining congressional seats. The paper concludes by assessing the consequences of the partisan gap and predicting that the gendering of the parties-in-government will only intensify in the wake of the 2008 elections and beyond.

Jones reviews Robert Novak's new book, Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington. While Novak is not reflective about the larger lessons of his experiences, the book sheds light on how journalists cover and uncover Washington politics and is recommended especially to those who still consider politics an important part of political science.

This article is a review of Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy by Diana Mutz. The author provides an analysis of the book and offers some further directions for research on political talk and American political culture.

Diana Mutz's Hearing the Other Side is intended to be an empirical study of the tension between deliberative democracy and participatory democracy. While she concludes that the factors which promote one discourage the other, there are significant flaws in her approach to the question which call her conclusions into question.

Richard Skinner's More than Money offers evidence and frameworks for understanding how interest groups contribute to the electoral politics of a polarized Congress. Drawing upon the "party network" perspective, Skinner shows how the internal politics of individual groups affects the style and substance of their politicking.