Political Campaign finance and the United States Foreign Policy Decisions: A Cursory Look at the Jewish Lobby Group and the United States Middle East foreign policy

Abstract

The act of providing fund for political candidate by wealthy private individual and group has become a recurrent phenomenon in the United State electoral system. It is a pervasive campaign practice that cannot be isolated from the US politics. Individual and group donate huge sum of money to support political candidate or political parties of their choices. Of greater concern is the ease with which interest group adopts the strategy of campaign finance to influence state apparatus to achieve interest based policy concession. The Jewish lobby group is a loosed coalition of interest group whose primary objective is the advancement of the US- Israel relation for favourable foreign policy toward Israel. It is a prominent interest group with members who are often the richest and highest campaign donor in any election circle in the United States. The group over the years capitalised on the strategy of campaign financing to stronghold the United States Congress and the executive in order to shape the country Middle East foreign policy in favour of Israel. The study seeks to examine the dynamic role of interest group, the link between campaign financing and interest group using the Powerful Jewish lobby group as the basis of analysis. The theoretical foundation for the work is the elite theory postulated by Gaetano Mosca and the Italian school of elitism. Secondary source of data collection was adopted to extrapolate fact that are relevant to the study. The article find out that campaign fiancé is an integral part of the United States politics and cannot be divorced. Interest group such as the Jewish lobby group adopts the instrumentality of campaign financing to advance private interest