Small Change: Money, Political Parties, and Campaign Finance Reform - Softcover

Raja, Raymond J. La

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472050281 ISBN 13: 9780472050284

Verlag: The University of Michigan Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Reformers lament that, with every effort to regulate the sources of campaign funding, candidates creatively circumvent the new legislation. But in fact, political fundraisers don't need to look for loopholes because, as Raymond J. La Raja proves, legislators intentionally design regulations to gain advantage over their partisan rivals.

La Raja traces the history of the U.S. campaign finance system from the late nineteenth century through the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002. Then, using the 2004 presidential election as a case study, he compares the ways in which Democrats and Republicans adapted their national fund-raising and campaigning strategies to satisfy BCRA regulations. Drawing upon this wealth of historical and recent evidence, he concludes with recommendations for reforming campaign finance in ways that promote fair competition among candidates and guarantee their accountability to voters.

Small Change offers an engaging account of campaign finance reforms' contradictory history; it is a must-read for anyone concerned about influence of money on democratic elections.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Raymond J. La Raja is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Small Change

Money, Political Parties, and Campaign Finance ReformBy RAYMOND J. LA RAJA

The University of Michigan Press

Copyright © 2008University of Michigan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-05028-4

Contents

List of Tables.............................................................ixList of Figures............................................................xiAcknowledgments............................................................xiii1. Money and Politics......................................................12. Mugwump Reform and the Decline of Political Parties.....................173. A History of Federal Campaign Finance Laws..............................424. Explaining Campaign Finance Reform and the BCRA.........................815. Consequences of Reform for Party Fund-raising...........................1196. Consequences of Reform for Party Campaigning............................1587. The Aftermath of the BCRA...............................................200Afterword..................................................................235Appendix...................................................................239Notes......................................................................241References.................................................................265Index......................................................................279

Chapter One

Money and Politics

For at least a century, the nation has struggled with how to reconcile the role of money in politics. Much of the public debate has focused on the potentially corrupting effects of political contributions to candidates and on how to curtail the influence of wealthy donors. Frequently ignored in these debates are the consequences of campaign finance regulations for political organizing and campaigns. These regulations matter not only as a way to prevent influence peddling-the classic quid pro quo-but also because they influence who has power in electoral politics. Campaign finance laws help some political organizations and candidates raise and spend political funds more easily than others. In turn, these laws can influence who gets elected to public office.

Seen from the perspective of electoral engagement, regulating money becomes not merely an issue concerning corruption but also one that raises questions about fairness in a broader sense. Who gains from changing campaign finance rules? How do these rules affect different groups? These are questions this book explores. Rather than focus on candidates or interest groups, as many studies do, this work focuses primarily on political parties. I examine how campaign finance laws affect the two major national party organizations, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which have come to play significant roles in American political campaigns in recent decades. The goal is to understand how rules regulating political money have shaped the activities and influence of party organizations and, more indirectly, the groups and individuals that support these parties. In doing this, a broader purpose is to understand the dynamics of political reform, namely, the underlying motivations for pursuing reform and how rules generate consequences, both intended and unintended. This knowledge is then put to use in a specific context to assess how parties respond to the current configuration of laws under the new Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002.

The national party organizations have been in existence since the mid-nineteenth century, but they have traditionally been weak institutions in a system of decentralized political parties. Their chief task was to organize the national conventions, after which they virtually disappeared until four years later. Typically, American parties were most influential at the local level among party chieftains who controlled blocs of county or urban voters and the patronage jobs available in the cities and states. The intensely local nature of party politics has changed in the past thirty years. In the 1980s and 1990s national political parties emerged as stronger organizations to help candidates meet the growing expense of campaigns (Aldrich 1995; Cotter et al. 1984; Herrnson 1988; Schlesinger 1984). They came to possess critical electoral resources, giving them the potential to influence outcomes in presidential and congressional races. With permanent headquarters in Washington, staffed with professionals, both major parties became formidable fund-raisers and sources of expertise, controlling vast amounts of voter data. In the 2004 elections, national political committees combined to spend more than $1.2 billion, or more than one-third of the total reported spending in congressional and presidential elections (Federal Election Commission 2005a). Only three decades earlier in 1972 they spent just $11 million, which reflected just 5 percent of total campaign spending for federal races (Alexander 1976, 85-92).

There is wide consensus among political scientists that the emergence of stronger national parties is good for democracy. Parties have proven to be reliable mediating institutions that connect citizens to their government. Through their widely understood labels, parties help voters identify and select among candidates and policies. By contesting elections, parties also bring accountability to governing elites who must face the prospect of being challenged by an opposing party candidate if they are unresponsive to the public. In addition, political parties help to unite various interests through the give-and-take of coalition building necessary for winning elections in a two-party system. In theory, at least, the partisan goal of winning office should give the parties an incentive to mobilize underrepresented groups that lack other institutional bases of support (Key 1942). A strong national presence has the potential to tighten links between different political groups and bring together local, state, and federal candidates behind a common party platform.

While contemporary national parties appear to be thriving, they do so in a campaign environment highly dependent on money. Like other sectors of society-business, media, and nonprofits-politics has shifted from an activity supported by labor resources to one more dependent on technology and capital. Political campaigns compete for the attention of citizens through intense consumer advertising and leisure entertainment. For this reason, politics has turned to techniques of persuasion and mobilization to capture audiences. Modern campaigns now depend on the intensive use of mass media technology, which include the expert services of pollsters, media consultants, and direct mail marketers.

For the past two decades, spending in federal elections has outpaced the rate of inflation, abetted by the huge costs associated with television advertising (Ansolabehere, de Figueiredo, and Snyder 2003, 105-30). The amounts spent in political campaigns seem astonishing to the average American. In 2004, the presidential and congressional elections cost more than $4 billion, which was more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of Haiti (World Bank 2006). The fact that money has become so critical in elections creates fundamental tensions in the democratic system. In theory, the democratic process, at least since the twentieth century, is rooted in the principle of "one-person, one vote." But that principle appears undermined by a campaign finance system that allows unlimited political campaign contributions. Wealthy donors may...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: The University of Michigan Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0472050281
• ISBN 13: 9780472050284
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 287
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar