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Money and Women's Candidacies for Public Office

Barbara C. Burrell

in Women and American Politics: New Questions, New Directions

This chapter reviews existing research about campaign finance and the funding of the campaigns of women candidates for public office. Burrell discusses the role of women's political action committees ... More

This chapter reviews existing research about campaign finance and the funding of the campaigns of women candidates for public office. Burrell discusses the role of women's political action committees (PACs), reviews the findings regarding campaign contributions to women candidates, and proposes an agenda for future research on money and women's candidacies for office.Less

The Corporate Elite and the Drug Enforcement Regime

Horace A. Bartilow

in Drug War Pathologies: Embedded Corporatism and U.S. Drug Enforcement in the Americas

The legislative deliberations of Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative also supported elite theories of the state and showed that corporate campaign contributions and the reciprocal relationships ... More

The legislative deliberations of Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative also supported elite theories of the state and showed that corporate campaign contributions and the reciprocal relationships between corporate elites and the federal government also influence American counternarcotic aid flows. This chapter uses the Heckman selection estimator to ascertain whether these outcomes are also generalizable. First, it uses principal component factor analysis to create an index to operationalize C. Wright Mills’ concept of an interlocking directorate, which measures the interconnections among corporate board of directors for the corporations in the data set and their interconnections with policy think tanks and the U.S. government. The statistical findings provide evidence that corporate campaign contributions, corporate inter-locks with think tanks and the federal government, and an interlocking directorate systematically increased U.S. counternarcotic aid to eighty recipient countries. And since drug enforcement policy making toward Colombia and Mexico also demonstrated that congressional funding for the drug war is a source of corporate revenues, the chapter concludes by utilizes a time-series cross section statistical analysis that shows that increasing levels of counternarcotic aid flows increases corporate capital accumulation again confirming that the case study findings are generalizable.Less

Toward a Political Theory of the Emergence of Environmental Incentive Regulation

Jean‐Jacques Laffont

in Incentives and Political Economy

This chapter discusses the choice of economic instruments for environmental policy in the political economy framework of imperfect information and the need to provide incentives for political ... More

This chapter discusses the choice of economic instruments for environmental policy in the political economy framework of imperfect information and the need to provide incentives for political majorities. Models of command‐and‐control regulation and interest groups competition are presented. These models are then extended to study the impact of the dynamics of re‐election based on campaign contributions.Less

Testing the Unified Theory of Colleague Valuation in the U.S. House of Representatives

Kristin Kanthak and George A. Krause

in The Diversity Paradox: Parties, Legislatures, and the Organizational Foundations of Representation in America

This chapter provides an empirical test of the formal model derived in the previous chapter, drawing on methods from the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) tradition. The dependent ... More

This chapter provides an empirical test of the formal model derived in the previous chapter, drawing on methods from the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) tradition. The dependent variable is member-to-member campaign contributions from legislators’ leadership PACs, which are PACs created for the sole purpose of channeling campaign contributions to other legislators. Although these contributions exist largely for electoral reasons, controlling for those reasons provides a measure of colleague valuation. The chapter describes a double-hurdle regression model, which is a generalization of the Tobit model that allows coefficients from the first and second stage to vary. The results show that as expected from the unified theory of colleague valuation, men devalue women more as the proportion of women increases. Contrary to the theory, women also devalue women as their proportion increases, a problem called asymmetric tokenism, which is addressed in more detail in the chapter that follows.Less

Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC

in The Constitution of Electoral Speech Law: The Supreme Court and Freedom of Expression in Campaigns and Elections

This chapter examines Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC. It considers the state of Missouri's effort to establish campaign contribution limits for state officials paralleling those upheld in ... More

This chapter examines Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC. It considers the state of Missouri's effort to establish campaign contribution limits for state officials paralleling those upheld in Buckley v. Valeo. Challenging the $1,000 limit ($1,075, as applied in this case), Shrink Missouri Government PAC argued that the caps on contributions unconstitutionally restricted its ability to support its preferred Republican candidate in the primary election for state auditor. But for the Court, the state had shown that the limits were necessary to diminish (the “appearance” of) “corruption,” to encourage more positive perceptions of the political process, and even to facilitate particular forms of speech (e.g. time as opposed to money) in the electoral marketplace of ideas.Less

Campaign Contributions and Partisan Vote Choice

Daron R. Shaw, Brian E. Roberts, and Mijeong Baek

in The Appearance of Corruption: Testing the Supreme Court's Assumptions about Campaign Finance Reform

Chapter 6 investigates the effects of campaign finance information on partisan (candidate) vote choice, a separate interest advanced by the Buckley Court in the context of campaign finance disclosure ... More

Chapter 6 investigates the effects of campaign finance information on partisan (candidate) vote choice, a separate interest advanced by the Buckley Court in the context of campaign finance disclosure laws. More specifically, survey-based experiments are used to ascertain the impact of information about the amount of money raised by a candidate for office, as well as the source of that money, on a respondent’s likelihood of casting a ballot for that candidate. The data indicate that the amount raised by a candidate matters much less than where that money comes from. In addition, the empirical analysis shows that partisans were often more influenced by information about their own candidate than about the candidate of the opposing party.Less

The Appearance of Corruption: An Introduction

Daron R. Shaw, Brian E. Roberts, and Mijeong Baek

in The Appearance of Corruption: Testing the Supreme Court’s Assumptions about Campaign Finance Reform

Chapter 1 describes the Supreme Court’s reasoning on campaign finance regulation, free speech, and political campaigns and then offers a chapter-by-chapter plan for testing the key assumptions ... More

Chapter 1 describes the Supreme Court’s reasoning on campaign finance regulation, free speech, and political campaigns and then offers a chapter-by-chapter plan for testing the key assumptions underlying the Court’s reasoning. The behavioral model of the Buckley v. Valeo (1976) links individuals’ perceptions of corruption to their decisions to participate politically, hypothesizing that the greater an individual’s perception of corruption the less likely that person is to participate in the political process (e.g., vote) because of an erosion of trust in government. Based on these assumptions, the Court accepts the mitigation of corruption as the (lone) compelling state interest for limits on money in politics. Chapter 1 outlines how the authors will empirically explore the behavioral model posited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision.Less

Letting Money into Elections: Citizens United and McCutcheon

Gregory P. Magarian

in Managed Speech: The Roberts Court's First Amendment

This chapter examines the Roberts Court’s most notorious, controversial decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which strikes down long-standing bans on election spending by ... More

This chapter examines the Roberts Court’s most notorious, controversial decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which strikes down long-standing bans on election spending by corporations and unions. The discussion puts Citizens United in legal and historical context, and it covers several other Roberts Court decisions related to Citizens United. The chapter then examines a potentially even more important decision, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which strikes down federal limits on the total amounts of money that campaign donors may contribute in an election cycle. Together these two decisions empower corporations, wealthy donors, and the major political parties to play a dominant managerial role in shaping the contents of electoral debates.Less

Reshaping State and Local Politics

Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe

in Billionaires and Stealth Politics

Chapter 5 examines the major financial investments certain billionaires have made on the state and local levels. It also examines the substantial impacts that these investments have had, particularly ... More

Chapter 5 examines the major financial investments certain billionaires have made on the state and local levels. It also examines the substantial impacts that these investments have had, particularly in states like Wisconsin, Kansas, and North Carolina. In those states, billionaires and organizations that they control have helped elect extremely wealth-friendly governors and so many wealth-friendly state legislators that the control of state governments has changed drastically, and economics-related public policy has veered in new, extremely conservative directions. It is no exaggeration to say that those billionaires have helped reshape state politics. The chapter then focuses on one particular political strategy, the strategy of “boundary control,” which some billionaires have used with considerable success. In the boundary control strategy, federal-level and state-level campaign contributions are coordinated so as to win state-level favors and benefits while warding off federal-level interference.Less

Silicon Valley Leaders in Federal Elections

Darren R. Halpin and Anthony J. Nownes

in The New Entrepreneurial Advocacy: Silicon Valley Elites in American Politics

Chapter 3 examines one individual form of corporate elite political engagement—campaign giving. The chapter undertakes an in-depth look at the itemized federal campaign contributions of Silicon ... More

Chapter 3 examines one individual form of corporate elite political engagement—campaign giving. The chapter undertakes an in-depth look at the itemized federal campaign contributions of Silicon Valley CEOs and founders during the 2015–2016 federal election cycle. Relying upon publicly available Federal Election Commission data on individual contributions, the chapter answers questions including: How prevalent is campaign giving among the corporate elites on our SV150+ CEO and founder lists? Do these corporate elites give more or less than other sets of corporate elites? In their giving, are SV150+ CEOs and founders as Democratic as previous studies suggest they are? Are they indeed a new financial constituency of the Democratic Party? Are Silicon Valley corporate elites simply furthering their firms’ interests when they give, or are they “free agents” following their own, personal preferences?Less

Of Merit Goods Generally: Specific Applications and Concluding Thoughts

Guido Calabresi

in The Future of Law and Economics: Essays in Reform and Recollection

This chapter explains what merit goods are, how they might best be handled, and why a society might well wish to handle them in ways other than by altering its general wealth distribution. It ... More

This chapter explains what merit goods are, how they might best be handled, and why a society might well wish to handle them in ways other than by altering its general wealth distribution. It considers examples of goods and bads that can be categorized as merit goods and involve commodification and commandification costs, including military service, transplantable body parts, child rights, and campaign contributions, as well as a basic level of education, health care, and environmental protection. It also discusses the moral costs of suffering that people go through if these goods and bads are allocated according to the prevailing wealth distribution, along with the fact that there are different ways of diminishing these wealth distribution-dependent costs. Finally, it examines how a society chooses which goods to remove from the market and how it decides which to treat as merit goods. It suggests that the nonordinary market treatment of some goods is probably essential to the perdurance of incentives.Less

End of an Era

Rob Christensen

in The Rise and Fall of the Branchhead Boys: North Carolina's Scott Family and the Era of Progressive Politics

Returning to the farm, Bob Scott was unsure about what to do. His attempted comeback in 1980 resulted in a humiliation. But he served as president of the state community college system. His daughter, ... More

Returning to the farm, Bob Scott was unsure about what to do. His attempted comeback in 1980 resulted in a humiliation. But he served as president of the state community college system. His daughter, Meg Scott Phipps, was elected agriculture commissioner in 2000, but her career crashed and burned when she was convicted and went to jail for taking illegal campaign contributions. It did not help the Scott name that her father, Bob Scott, was one of her chief advisors.Less

Political Particularism and Trade Policy in Developing Democracies

Bumba Mukherjee

in Democracy and Trade Policy in Developing Countries

Electoral institutions drive the political strategies and economic policies of incumbents in developing states where democracy is consolidated over time. This chapter develops a theoretical model ... More

Electoral institutions drive the political strategies and economic policies of incumbents in developing states where democracy is consolidated over time. This chapter develops a theoretical model that identifies the most critical set of electoral institutions that are likely to affect trade politics and trade policy choices of politicians in consolidated democracies across the developing world. The model suggests that “political particularism” – that drives the discipline, internal strength and centralization of political parties – is the single most important electoral institutional factor that drives trade politics and the political relationship between labor and capital in established developing country democracies. Using the logic of game-theory, the model shows that political leaders in candidate-centered democracies (which have weak political parties) are more likely to weigh the trade policy of interests of labor over protectionist owners of import-competing industries. The model is further extended to show that incumbents in party-centered democracies are more susceptible to lobbying by protectionist industries and are also more likely to pander to the interests of capital over labor. The substantive implications of the theoretical model developed in this chapter are presented and discussed in detail.Less

What Is to Be Done about Billionaires?

Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe

in Billionaires and Stealth Politics

Chapter 6 relates our findings to general ideas about democracy. It mentions the damage to political equality that may result if the wealthiest Americans wield much more political influence than ... More

Chapter 6 relates our findings to general ideas about democracy. It mentions the damage to political equality that may result if the wealthiest Americans wield much more political influence than other citizens can muster. The chapter focuses on the special problems posed by stealth politics, which helps billionaires avoid being held accountable by their fellow citizens. The book closes by suggesting some possible remedies that citizens might want to pursue if they wish to make wealthy Americans more politically accountable – namely, getting the stealthiness out of politics by increasing transparency in the realm of campaign contributions. It also notes the broader types of reforms that would be needed if one wished to increase political equality and reinvigorate majoritarian democracy in America.Less

A bribery event that never happened: The case of businessman Vernon Drabek

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Bribery Cases

A city council member misunderstood Drabek’s offer to help her employ a tax resale plan as a way to get credit for solving a city problem and also to help her with campaign financing, including a ... More

A city council member misunderstood Drabek’s offer to help her employ a tax resale plan as a way to get credit for solving a city problem and also to help her with campaign financing, including a check for $1,000. She misunderstood the check as a bribe for getting the city to buy one of Drabek’s properties. In an effort to prove this, she taped eight meetings with Drabek, who considered the meetings to be business advice speech events and campaign contribution speech events. The city council member considered them bribery speech events. Analysis of the schemas, speech acts, and conversational strategies demonstrated how the two were in different speech events. This is a case in which the prosecutor’s wise intelligence analysis of the questionable undercover tape evidence caused him to drop the charges.Less

Corporate Elites and American Politics

Darren R. Halpin and Anthony J. Nownes

in The New Entrepreneurial Advocacy: Silicon Valley Elites in American Politics

The book begins by introducing the Silicon Valley 150+, the 175 biggest public and private firms in Silicon Valley, and discusses the intent of the book: to examine the political engagement of those ... More

The book begins by introducing the Silicon Valley 150+, the 175 biggest public and private firms in Silicon Valley, and discusses the intent of the book: to examine the political engagement of those individuals who founded and are CEOs of the SV150+ firms. This chapter introduces the main themes of the book, positioning the book against literatures covering business lobbying, political donations by firms, philanthropy and public policy, and the formation of new advocacy organizations. The chapter also includes three important lists: (1) the SV150+ firm list—the list of Silicon Valley firms the book studies; (2) the SV150+ CEO list—the list of CEOs the book studies; and (3) the SV150+ founder list—the list of founders the book studies. The chapter concludes with an overview of the chapters to come.Less

Ethics in Government

Richard B. Collins, Dale A. Oesterle, and Lawrence Friedman

in The Colorado State Constitution

This chapter covers Article XXIX of the Colorado Constitution on ethics in government. The article was added by citizens’ initiative in 2006. Its essential purpose was to outlaw gifts defined in ... More

This chapter covers Article XXIX of the Colorado Constitution on ethics in government. The article was added by citizens’ initiative in 2006. Its essential purpose was to outlaw gifts defined in Section 3 to public officers, employees, and their families. The section’s stricter ban allows no gift of any value by lobbyists except for campaign contributions; it specifically outlaws meals and beverages. Enforcement is committed to an Independent Ethics Commission (IEC) appointed as specified in Section 5. Since undertaking enforcement of the amendment, IEC has issued numerous decisions. Rulings are often responses to anticipatory requests by public officials, but some address attempts to discredit political opponents.Less

Profit in American Corrections

Anna Gunderson

in Captive Market: The Politics of Private Prisons in America

Chapter 2 introduces the author’s data set, information on the location of private prisons operated by publicly traded companies in the United States from 1986 to 2016, the most comprehensive data ... More

Chapter 2 introduces the author’s data set, information on the location of private prisons operated by publicly traded companies in the United States from 1986 to 2016, the most comprehensive data set of these institutions thus far developed. The author painstakingly reviews dozens of Securities and Exchange Commission reports which detail the locations and capacities of companies’ facilities. She also reviews the historical involvement of private interests and profit in American corrections and considers some utilitarian questions: What is considered to be a private prison? How do states enter into contracts with private companies? This section includes interview quotes to shine a light on an extremely opaque and closed industry. Finally, the author considers a few alternative explanations for privatization (partisanship, economics, unionization, and campaign contributions) and illustrates that none of these are sufficient to explain this policy choice. If these factors do not explain prison privatization, what does?Less