What We Know and What We Don't: A Review of the Literature Empirically Analyzing the Effects of State Campaign Finance Reform Laws

Abstract

Assumptions about the empirical effects of various campaign finance proposals underpin the ideological and practical positions of public officials, academics and other advocates or opponents of different types of reform. But while the debate rages on, few have taken the time to determine whether these assumptions are empirically measurable or accurate. In regards to even some of the most widely discussed types of such as contribution limits, few have asked the simple question: what is its effect on the way people vote or on the outcome of elections? A small cadre of political scientists has attempted to answer these questions by examining the impact that different state campaign finance regimes have had on state elections. Unlike the federal government, which has been relatively reticent to experiment, the states have truly lived up to their billing as laboratories of reform, providing researchers with a myriad of different regimes and several decades of data on which to evaluate them. Those researchers that have exploited this wealth of information have been able to test and, often, to challenge existing assumptions about the impact of different types of reform. A complete review of all of the existing efforts made by political scientists to examine and quantify the impact of various state campaign finance reform efforts reveals an interesting picture. Many of the current assumptions about campaign finance reform may very well be wrong while several others have never been tested. In sum, a review of the existing literature yields many answers but may leave even more questions.