Campaign Finance System Research Articles

State Legislative Campaign Finance Research: A Review Essay

AbstractOver the last 10 years, a great deal of research has been conducted in what had been a neglected field—state legislative campaign finance. Much of this research is motivated by concerns about the impact of money on democracy in state legislative elections. This essay reviews that work critically, looking particularly at studies of spending levels, campaign contributions and fundraising, spending and voting, and campaign finance reform. Comparing campaign finance systems across the states facilitates theory building, provides empirical leverage with which to test hypotheses developed at the congressional level, and allows us to test the efficacy of campaign finance reforms.

New York City's Campaign Finance System: Why Is the Best Hope for Reform Being Ignored?

New York City's Campaign Finance System: Why Is the Best Hope for Reform Being Ignored?

Money, Elections, and Democracy in Brazil

AbstractBrazil’s 1993 law requiring candidates to report their campaign contributions has generated a new source of data to explore the supposition that Brazilian elections are extraordinarily expensive. An examination of these data from Brazil’s 1994 and 1998 general elections reveals that most money for Brazilian electoral campaigns comes from business sources and that leftist candidates have extremely limited access to such financing. The effect on democracy is that Brazil’s largely unregulated campaign finance system tends to decrease the scope of interest representation.

Some Problems with Taxpayer-Funded Political Campaigns

If one were trying to identify the world's healthiest democracy, the United States-with its long history of peaceful transitions of power, independent judiciary, sound record in human rights, expansive personal liberties, low inflation and unemployment, balanced government budgets, high standard of living, and relatively low taxes-would seem as good a candidate as any. Despite this, for literally decades we have been bombarded with complaints and warnings that this democracy was fundamentally unhealthy due to its reliance on private funds to finance political campaigns. Given the long-term record though, I think it prudent to presume that we ought to retain our traditional, private system of campaign finance, and that a high burden of proof should be placed on those proposing radical change. When all is said and done, the indictment of private financing of campaigns rests on two arguments: it violates equality and fosters corruption. The system is unequal because not every citizen can give the same amount and because not every candidate or party can raise the same amount. They lack equal It is corrupt because officeholders might feel beholden either to those who gave them money in the last election or to those who might give them money in future elections. These officeholders will thus lose the ability to act freely in carrying out their duties: they are subject to undue influence.

The Legitimacy Crisis and the New Progressivism

Those of us who educate for public service need to understand the indirect role we have played in fueling the present governmental legitimacy crisis. As an antidote, I urge here a regrounding and rethinking of the enlightenment agenda of human improvement. This agenda includes a reconstruction of the idea of government as part of a portfolio of means for improving the human condition. The Legitimacy Crisis The widespread crisis in government legitimacy now sweeping the United States and many other industrialized democracies has many manifestations. Its most extreme form is in the militia movements that capture the headlines with devastating acts, but the less dramatic examples may be even more important. These include threats to Department of Interior employees trying to do their jobs on public lands, hatred of the police, candidates who get elected primarily because they run against government, and widespread tax revolts that have swept our nation. My thesis is that those of us who educate for public service have, through the best of intentions, played an important contributory role in this crisis. In addition, the research community from both the liberal and conservative parts of the political spectrum has fueled these disastrous fires, but in different ways. Many of my concerns have to do with the role that has been played by the research institutions and the teaching programs that make up the National Association of Schools of Public Administration (NASPAA) and the Association of Public Policy and Management (APPAM). Of course, the legitimacy crisis has many roots: economic performance and dislocation, a corrupt campaign finance system, indecisive and illegitimate wars, and poor government performance. Yet we have fed these roots in more ways than we customarily think. We have made the legitimacy crisis worse in at least three ways: in our curricula we have often not emphasized the moral case for government, we have failed to offer a counter offensive to the right wing's attacks on government, and we have appropriated the language of the market. What We Often Don't Teach (or didn't until recently) The educational programs that are included in the NASPAA and the APPAM often offer no positive moral case for government, nor do they give adequate consideration to the ethical duties of public servants. Both public policy and public administration rest on charters that block such moral arguments. In the case of public administration it is the idea that administrators are carrying out an exogenously given, value laden agenda over which they have little or no control. This idea grew out of the reform movement in the early part of this century, a movement which sought to reduce corruption by isolating administration from politics. In public policy, it is the legacy of positive social science that blocks most moral groundings for the state. The development of moral argument was taken to be outside the purview of a scientific agenda. While the intent was honorable--to bring the tools of science to the public sector to improve its efficiency--the results have been to undercut it by failing to articulate the moral case for government independent of the market. Ironically, a crucial dimension of the science side of the positivist agenda is not well developed since most schools teach a theory of motivation grounded in microeconomics. This theory is mainly empty of content, saying only that persons seek to maximize the satisfaction of their preferences, yet offering no account of what those preferences are or how they are caused, much less what they ought to be. Without substantive understanding of behavior, which surely must include the perspective of evolutionary biology, we are unable to fashion public policies that are effective, thus further eroding public confidence in government. What We Often Don't Do A second way in which the academy has contributed to the undermining of the trust in government is that we have not responded to a concerted right wing attack on government with a powerful and credible theoretical defense of it. …

“New Realities, New Thinking”: Report of the Task Force on Campaign Finance Reform

Campaign finance today is characterized by an expanding political arena in which significantly increasing amounts of money flow in novel and constantly changing ways. A generation ago, the cutting edge was that, rather than relying on the political parties, candidates were raising and spending money to advance their own candidacies. Today, the candidate-centered campaign is conventional, and the trend is away from spending that is under candidates' control and towards a broad range of new actors engaged in a wide array of political activities. Whole new categories of players (e.g., bundlers and groups which spend money to communicate with voters about candidates but which do not coordinate their activities with any candidate or party) now operate outside of the rules set up for the system as it existed in 1974. And whole new categories of money (e.g., soft money and party spending undertaken independently of any candidate's campaign) are unregulated, subject only to limited disclosure.The New Realities pose new problems. And these new problems require New Thinking; many reform ideas advanced in the past few years simply will not work in today's campaign finance environment.Specifically, the problems of today's campaign finance system fall under three headings. We identify each of these problems and recommend steps to address it. However, before tackling reform, we note that it is time for diminished expectations; given our conflicting goals and the constitutional, political, and pragmatic restraints of the American system, regulation will not give us everything we might want.

“New Realities, New Thinking”: Report of the Task Force on Campaign Finance Reform

Extract Campaign finance today is characterized by an expanding political arena in which significantly increasing amounts of money flow in novel and constantly changing ways. A generation ago, the cutting edge was that, rather than relying on the political parties, candidates were raising and spending money to advance their own candidacies. Today, the candidate-centered campaign is conventional, and the trend is away from spending that is under candidates' control and towards a broad range of new actors engaged in a wide array of political activities. Whole new categories of players (e.g., bundlers and groups which spend money to communicate with voters about candidates but which do not coordinate their activities with any candidate or party) now operate outside of the rules set up for the system as it existed in 1974. And whole new categories of money (e.g., soft money and party spending undertaken independently of any candidate's campaign) are unregulated, subject only to limited disclosure.The New Realities pose new problems. And these new problems require New Thinking; many reform ideas advanced in the past few years simply will not work in today's campaign finance environment.Specifically, the problems of today's campaign finance system fall under three headings. We identify each of these problems and recommend steps to address it. However, before tackling reform, we note that it is time for diminished expectations; given our conflicting goals and the constitutional, political, and pragmatic restraints of the American system, regulation will not give us everything we might want.

Paying for Congress

No abstract available.

The Role of Parties in Legislative Campaign Financing

The purpose of the analysis presented in this paper is to examine the role that party organizations play in campaign finance systems of state legislative elections. Party organizations are found to be more likely to fund candidates in competitive elections and more likely to fund challengers than are nonparty organizations. The impact of an increased role for party organizations in campaign finance systems is illustrated by simulating the distribution of campaign money and the results of state legislative elections under different scenarios of party funding.

Creative campaigning: PACs and the presidential selection process

The strategic environment of the modern nominating process federal law and new campaign alternatives the rise of Presidential candidate PACs the financial advantages of PAC sponsorship the shadow campaign candidate PACs and the campaign finance system reforming the reforms.

Campaign contributions in Texas Supreme Court races

One of the most disturbing features of an elective judiciary is judicial campaign finance. This paper explores the financing of the 1988 Texas Supreme Court races, probably the most expensive partisan judicial election campaign in history. It examines the sources of the funding of those six seats on the court in terms of competition among interest groups for control of the court. It also examines proposed reforms in the system of campaign finance and points out that those reforms are not neutral tools of “good government”, but that instead they have massive political implications for the interests vying to influence the direction of tort law in the state.