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Campaign contributions are widely viewed as a corrupting influence but most scholarly research concludes that they have marginal impact on legislative behavior. Lynda W. Powell shows that contributions have considerable influence in some state legislatures but very little in others. Using a national survey of legislators, she develops an innovative measure of influence and delineates the factors that explain this great variation across the 99 U.S. state legislative chambers. Powell identifies the personal, institutional, and political factors that determine how much time a legislator devotes to personal fundraising and fundraising for the caucus. She shows that the extent of donors' legislative influence varies in ways corresponding to the same variations in the factors that determine fundraising time. She also confirms a link between fundraising and lobbying with evidence supporting the theory that contributors gain access to legislators based on donations, Powell's findings have important implications for the debate over the role of money in the legislative process.
Based on the largest data set available on state campaign finance, this work analyzes contribution and spending patterns at the state level in the USA. A range of issues are explained, including the rise in campaign costs and how spending patterns relate to the outcome of the elections.
This book studies the current paradox within the voting literature on campaign contributions and legislative voting behavior. Specifically, while journalists and observers believe that the contributions significantly influence congressional votes, empirical evidence compiled by political scientists has generally failed to identify a systematic linkage between the two. At the same time, the amount of money contributed by interest groups is increasing and polls indicate that the public is becoming more cynical about the process.
An illuminating perspective on the polarizing effects of campaign finance reform
Why is there still so much dissatisfaction with the role of special interest groups in financing American election campaigns, even though no aspect of interest group politics has been so thoroughly regu-lated and constrained? This book argues that part of the answer lies in the laws themselves, which prevent many hard-to-organize citizen groups from forming effective political action committees (PACs), while actually helping business groups organize PACs. Thomas L. Gais points out that many laws that regulate group involvement in elections ignore the real difficulties of political mobilization, and he concludes that PACs and the campaign finance laws reflect a fundamental discrepancy between grassroots ideals and the ways in which broadly based groups actually get organized. ". . . . of fundamental scholarly and practical importance. The implications for 'reform' are controversial, flatly contradicting other recent reform proposals . . . . I fully expect that Improper Influence will be one of the most significant books on campaign finance to be published in the 1990s." --Michael Munger, Public Choice "It is rare to find a book that affords a truly fresh perspective on the role of special interest groups in the financing of U.S. elections. It is also uncommon to find a theoretically rigorous essay confronting a topic usually grounded in empirical terms. . . . Improper Influence scores high on both counts and deserves close attention from students of collective action, campaign finance law, and the U.S. political process more generally." --American Political Science Review Thomas L. Gais is Senior Fellow, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, State University of New York.
Perhaps no other issue surrounding the health of our democracy worries American voters more than the role of money in elections, and campaign finance reform is a salient topic as a result. Academic studies of campaign finance, however, have focused their analyses at the level of the individual campaign -- relevant for a variety of important questions but not calibrated for studying the impact of policy instruments that affect the entire legislature at once. I offer a new focus on the systemic effects of campaign spending. Using a natural experiment in U.S. state legislatures, I find that a ten percentage point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) share of total campaign contributions causes a five percentage point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) share of the legislature. Campaign spending has a large effect on electoral outcomes, and regulations on which groups are permitted to donate are a potent policy lever.
The updated edition of this book describes the role of gender in the American electoral process through the 2008 elections. It strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2008 elections and providing a deeper analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding presidential elections, voter participation and turnout, voting choices, the participation of African American women, congressional elections, the support of political parties and women's organizations, candidate communications with voters, and state elections. This updated volume also includes new chapters that analyze the roles of Latinas in US politics and chronicle the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.