Results for “campaign finance” 126 found
Would campaign finance reform limit political polarization?
Mann and Corrado have new work on this topic, here is a brief excerpt from the Brookings summary:
The evidence suggests that increasing the role of small donors would have little effect on partisan polarization in either direction because small donors tend to be highly polarized. Although Mann and Corrado note that a healthier mix would champion democratic ideals like civic participation and equality of voice.
Taking both points together, Mann and Corrado find that campaign finance reform is insufficient for depolarizing the parties and improving governing capacity. They argue forcefully that polarization emerges from a broader political and partisan problem. Ultimately, they assert that, “some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.”
I view campaign finance reform as in general an overrated idea on the Left.
What does campaign finance do?
Here is Ed Lopez’s survey article, here is the survey from Thomas Stratmann. Overall the academics who work on this issue tend to see the practical ramifications of campaign finance restrictions as very often constituting less than meets the eye. It’s also well understood that most campaign finance reform benefits incumbents, who already have name recognition.
The pointer is from Ed Lopez, who notes:
Consider two ratios.
1. In 2000 the federal government spent about 1.8 trillion (~18% of
GDP), and total campaign expenditures on all federal elective offices
was about $1.85 billion (about $1b on congressional races, $0.35b on
presidential, and $0.5b in soft money). So federal public sector
advertising was 1/1000th of federal public spending. Ratio 1 = 0.001.2. In 2000 the private sector share of GDP was about $7.5 trillion
(after federal, state and local spending net of intergovernmental
transfers), and total private sector advertising, according to
Advertising Age, was $240 billion (Statistical Abstract Table 1251). So private advertising was 3.2% of private spending. Ratio 2 = .032.By this comparison, private sector advertising is more than thirty times greater
than the amount we spend on federal elections trying to make sure we
get the right person for the job. Given how much we expect from our
federal government, isn’t it surprising that campaign spending isn’t
twice, or even ten times, more than it is right now?
Ed thinks that campaigns need more money flowing through them, not less; I don’t have a personal view on this issue. Reihan Salam offers interesting comment on recent controversies surrounding Barack Obama.
Competitive Campaign Finance
There is an interesting piece in the April issue of The Atlantic (article not online, subscribe here) on how the Bush team is using social competition and peer-incentives to increase their campaign finances.
Politicians have celebrated large fundraisers for years, but discreetly. Names were not publicized, and some campaigns had difficulty calculating the precise number of dollars brought in by a given fundraiser. Bush changed that. Before the 2000 election his campaign instituted a simple system of tracking numbers: any fundraiser who wanted dollars credited to himself could ask donors to write his designated number on their checks. The system ensured exact accounting and signaled that the campaign was closely monitoring how much individual bundlers were bringing in. Meanwhile the campaign set aggressive goals for bundlers and publicly disclosed which people hit what specific goals….all this has instilled a fervent spirit of competition in Bush’s network that has led it to raise more and more money.
In addition to approbation, being a succesful fundraiser pays off in other ways:
Of the 241 individuals who raised at least $100,000 “eight seven were named to posts in the administration. Nineteen became ambassadors, two were named Cabinet officials, one became a federal judge, and at least six (including the Enron executive Ken Lay) were members of the Energy Department transition team.
The Atlantic notes that while the former techniques are new the latter are old hat. See the article for more of interest, including data and maps.
Darth Vader’s wife likes micro-finance
Ms Portman, the 25-year-old Harvard graduate who co-chairs the Village Banking campaign, said it would seek to use social networking to galvanise her generation to support microfinance.
"I have seen that ending poverty is possible – it is just a mouse click away," said Ms Portman, whose video diary about Finca’s work will feature on its page on MySpace, the social networking website. "People check their MySpace pages 10 times a day, why not harness that tool to build support for microfinance."
Here is the story. Complain all you wish, as celebrity activism goes this is a step up. Here is an article on micro-finance spreading to Africa.
Democracy and the Democrats
It is not sufficiently remarked upon that many Democrats have an increasingly difficult time believing in democracy (you can level criticisms at Republicans here too, but those already get far more play, and please anyone who invokes the concept of equivalence here is just a mood-affiliating, internet knee-jerk dummy). To put it bluntly, many Democrats have arrived at the position that democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices!
See my previous post, and also the new column by Krugman.”Will Gas Prices Doom Democracy?”. All rhetorical contortions notwithstanding, I don’t see how many current Democrats avoid an implicit or maybe even explicit super-charged skepticism about, yes, democracy.
And it is increasingly hard to blame either “Big Tech” (largely run by Democrats), or campaign finance reform, which now on net is the friend of the Democrats, not the Republicans, at least at the national level.
Matters are easier for the classical liberal. Classical liberals are used to the idea of very bad politicians being elected. If some of those politicians become worse yet, that is highly unfortunate but it does not shake the underlying worldview to its core. Classical liberals also view government as pretty inefficient, often craven, inconsistent, and in many key matters unmanageable. That isn’t always so great! But it does provide some layers of protection against the very worst actors and their possible intentions.
I believe that in October 2022 the classical liberal case for democracy rests on firmer foundations than does the Democratic case for democracy.
Markets in everything, probably more where this came from edition
Mr. Sarkozy, 63, was taken into custody in Nanterre, northwest of Paris, after answering a police summons, according to a French judicial official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in line with department policy…
The suspicions behind this case first emerged in 2012, when the investigative news website Mediapart published a report suggesting that Mr. Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign had received up to 50 million euros, or nearly $62 million at current exchange rates, from the regime of Colonel Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan strongman who was killed in 2011. Such support would have violated France’s strict campaign finance laws, which cap spending and prohibit foreign funding.
Here is the NYT account. Here is my earlier post on Gerhard Schröder.
Rigged elections for me but not for thee
Donald Trump created quite the stir a few days ago when he suggested that the forthcoming Presidential election was going to be “rigged.” I’m not sure what exactly he meant by that, or even if it’s worth debating, but I did see my Tweeter feed respond with real furor. This will undercut faith in democracy I read, and thus the media needs to call him out on it. Yet over the last few years or indeed decades I also have seen the following:
1. Numerous arguments insist that money buys elections and campaign finance reform is imperative. That’s not exactly my view, with Trump himself now being Exhibit A on the other side of the issue, but please try to be consistent. A lot of you believe that elections are (were?) rigged! (Hey, psst…when can we go back to them being rigged again? Asking for a friend!)
2. Numerous arguments that Republican-backed voter registration requirements are keeping significant numbers of voters, most of all minority voters, away from the polls. That wouldn’t quite count as “rigging,” because the outcome still is not preordained, but it would be a form of slanting.
3. Not long ago, the conventional wisdom was that the race would be Clinton (Hillary) vs. Bush (Jeb). Fortunately, that is not rigging, rather we call it “spontaneous order.” Besides, it didn’t happen. We ended up with Clinton vs…Tormentor of Bush.
4. Do we not all teach the Gibbard-Sattherthwaite theorem to our Principles classes on week three? In case you forget, the theorem shows that under some fairly general assumptions elections processes are manipulable in a rigorous sense which is defined in social choice theory. You can think of this as a corollary of the Arrow Impossibility Theorem, actually.
People, I am so glad we don’t teach our students that elections are rigged, it is so much more important to teach that they are “manipulable” in the precise sense defined by social choice theory. Sadly, Mr. Trump failed that part of the course, because the silly boy wrote down the word “rigged” instead and botched the whole answer, heal so messed up the distinction between inter- and intra-profile versions of the theorem.
5. A related branch of social choice theory, stemming from Dick McKelvey’s work in 1979, suggests that when the policy space has more than one dimension, the agenda setter in Congress has a great deal of power and typically can shape the final outcome. True, that is Congress rather than a general democratic election. By the way, how many dimensions does the policy space have these days? If you’re not sure, that means the answer is “more than one.” Good thing that only “Congress keystone of the Washington establishment” is rigged!
6. Major political scientists from schools such as Princeton tell us that elites determine policy and ordinary voters have very little say in what happens. Don’t know if he used “the r word” or not! (By the way, I agree with the critique of Dylan Matthews.)
7. The American electoral system is designed to give the two major parties a huge initial advantage. I’m not suggesting that the public is actually itching to elect Jill Stein, but it would shape final outcomes a good deal, for better or worse, if the electoral playing field were more even in this regard.
Personally, I think median voters more or less get what they want on a large number of issues, especially broad-based ones in the public eye. You won’t find the word “rigged” popping up too much in the MR search function, besides I started blogging (and breathing) after Kennedy vs. Nixon. But my goodness, I can in fact understand why Donald Trump thinks the system is rigged. For years, you have been telling him that it is.
p.s. I don’t in fact teach the Gibbard-Sattherthwaite theorem in Principles and you won’t find it in the world’s very best Principles textbook. That we rigged.
Addendum: How many Democrats have alleged that the 2000 Presidential election was rigged? Or that today most Americans want some form of tougher gun control, but that the system is rigged against that outcome happening?
Don’t overestimate spending on elections
Binyamin Appelbaum has a new and excellent piece on this topic:
Even the 2012 presidential election, which recorded $2.6 billion in campaign spending, underperformed many forecasts. And spending has declined in each of the last two congressional elections. Candidates and other interested parties spent $3.7 billion on this year’s midterms, down from an inflation-adjusted total of $3.8 billion in 2012, which was less than the $4 billion spent in2010, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. (These figures do not include a few hundred million dollars in unreported spending on issue ads.) In fact, spending has dropped as the economy has grown and despite a series of contests in which at least one house of Congress was plausibly at stake. “Dire warnings rang out that the decision would herald a new era in politics,” wrote Adam Bonica, a Stanford University political scientist, in a 2013 paper about the effects of Citizens United. “Three years on, there is little evidence that these predictions have come to pass.” Over the past year, Americans spent more on almonds than on selecting their representatives in Congress.
The article is here, interesting throughout. Campaign finance, of course, is one of the areas where “the Left” is most likely to take an anti-science stance.
How The Public Funding Of Elections Increases Candidate Polarization
Yet another shibboleth of campaign finance reform appears to be in weak shape, here is a new paper (pdf):
I show that the public funding of elections produces a large decrease in the financial and electoral advantage of incumbents. Despite these eff ects on electoral competition, I demonstrate that public funding produces more polarization and candidate divergence|not less. Finally, I establish that this eff ect is at least in part due to the fact that public funding disproportionately aff ects the contribution behavior of access-oriented interest groups, groups who, I show, systematically support moderate incumbents. Access-oriented interest groups therefore help generate the incumbency advantage and mitigate polarization by supporting moderate legislators.
That is from Andrew B. Hall at the Department of Government at Harvard.
Arrived in my pile
Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us.
David Zetland, Living with Water Scarcity. Amazon here.
Robert E. Mutch, Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform.
William D. Ferguson, Collective Action & Exchange: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Contemporary Political Economy.
Jacob Soll, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations.
David Brooks on the McCutcheon decision
The Supreme Court just voted to eliminate aggregate contribution limits, here is David’s response:
The McCutcheon decision is a rare win for the parties. It enables party establishments to claw back some of the power that has flowed to donors and “super PACs.” It effectively raises the limits on what party establishments can solicit. It gives party leaders the chance to form joint fund-raising committees they can use to marshal large pools of cash and influence. McCutcheon is a small step back toward a party-centric system.
In their book “Better Parties, Better Government,” Peter J. Wallison and Joel M. Gora propose the best way to reform campaign finance: eliminate the restrictions on political parties to finance the campaigns of their candidates; loosen the limitations on giving to parties; keep the limits on giving to PACs.
Parties are not perfect, Lord knows. But they have broad national outlooks. They foster coalition thinking. They are relatively transparent. They are accountable to voters. They ally with special interests, but they transcend the influence of any one. Strengthened parties will make races more competitive and democracy more legitimate. Strong parties mobilize volunteers and activists and broaden political participation. Unlike super PACs, parties welcome large numbers of people into the political process.
Does wealth equal power?
That request was the first on the list and it came from Ezra Abrams, who wrote:
Wealth is equal to raw naked power: the power to fund PACs; the power to endow university chairs to influence people; the power to tear down neighborhoods and erect shopping malls. to what extent does the increase in wealth and income of the upper x% (relative to median or some other broad measure) mean that too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people one amusing example is from Kahnemann’s thinking fast and slow. Small schools show the best results b gates poured money into small schools However, what gates didn’t realize is that this is a small numbers artifacts; small schools show the best and worst results cause with a small school you can deviate from the mean …there you have raw naked power having a huge influence on educational policy
I disagree with most of that. The scholarly literature suggests that campaign finance reform doesn’t matter as much as people think.
The big banks control our government less than some critics have suggested.
Academics are quite liberal/democratic, yet college students seems to be slightly more conservative than the American public as a whole. The major impact of endowed chairs is to cement the roles of Harvard, Princeton and comparable schools as intellectual leaders.
Bill Gates influenced computer operating systems a good deal, but since he earned his money I’m not sure he has had a big impact on final outcomes. (The anti-malaria campaign may yet pay off.) He also has moved away from the “small classroom” idea, after he viewed the data. Fiscal pressures — not pressures from the wealthy — probably mean the idea will lose out anyway.
There are several reasons why wealth does not translate into power so easily. First, effective philanthropy is extremely difficult to achieve, especially if that philanthropy is trying to counteract prevailing social trends. Nor should it be assumed that non-profits are always the drivers of change. Second, the wealthy in groups do not always coordinate very effectively, to say the least. Each is used to being in charge (remember when the Lakers had Karl Malone and Gary Payton as well as Bryant and O’Neal?) Third, many of the very wealthy choose to consume ego rents rather than effectiveness. Fourth, “democracy” and “the market” control large chunks of modern life, and it is hard for outsiders to commandeer those processes. Most of the major functions of government are there because people want them to be there, for better or worse.
The best way to think about wealth and power is with some ideas from Harry Eckstein. There will be, for reasons of spontaneous order, a general concordance between the status and influence of groups in the broader world, and the power of those groups when it comes to government. American economic policy, for instance, really is more pro-business than in much of Europe, and that does stem from the more commercial nature of our republic. That said, the ability of the rich at the margin to control policy through intentional acts, either individually or in groups is much overrated.
Wealth does protect you from the depredations of others, such as being treated very badly by the police or legal system. In this defensive sense wealth can give you a good deal of power.
Overall the quality of argumentation and evidence on this topic is extremely low.
Addendum: Iceland, by the way, doesn’t want the money of the Chinese billionaire.
Which intellectuals have influence?
Ben Casnocha suggested to me that I have harsh standards. I don’t mean “influencing lots of other minds,” I mean changing the world. Here are a few intellectuals who have had real influence:
1. Jane Jacobs: City planners heed her strictures in many different locales, sometimes too much.
2. Rachel Carson, and numerous environmentalists: Obvious.
3. Milton Friedman: He inspired market-oriented reformers around the world, eased the way to floating exchange rates, helped legitimize early derivatives, and focused attention on monetary policy and away from fiscal policy, among other achievements.
What about today?
1. Peter Singer: Many fewer people eat meat and he has given the animal rights movement greater intellectual credibility.
2. Muhammad Yunnus: He popularized micro-credit and spread the notion to many countries, even though he is by no means its inventor.
3. Richard Posner: Many more judges use economic concepts when issuing judgments or writing up opinions.
Most of the people in this category have spent a big chunk of their lives pushing a single, fairly specific issue or method. You could add Bernanke (a special case, but still a yes), Charles Murray on poverty, and Germaine Greer. Art Laffer maybe. Friedman is a throwback to the time when generalists could be quite influential.
Who hasn’t had much influence over events? I would cite Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Slavoj Žižek, Christopher Hitchens, Paul Krugman, Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, Francis Fukuyama, Charles Taylor, Steven Pinker, Naomi Klein, and Niall Ferguson, among many others including virtually all economists.
Perhaps these individuals will have long-run influence on people’s broader views, and thus on longer-run events, but I wonder. Not everything feeds into a long and powerful stream, and every now and then there is a reset. We do not know, but we do know that some very focused individuals have had real influence.
I would put Esther Duflo, Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Romer, and Jacob Hacker (public option) in the “still have a good chance to have a big influence” category.
There is also the “futile crusaders” category, for instance Thomas Friedman for pushing for a centrist movement for green energy and Larry Lessig for IP reform and campaign finance reform, although of course subsequent events could upgrade them. We may well end up with green energy and IP reform but more likely as the result of technologies and market prices, rather than from successful intellectual battles.
Overall it is very hard to have much influence.
Assorted links
Assorted links
2. Would campaign finance reform matter?
3. Should we create an option for making Ereading harder?
4. How Apple tricks you, or applied behavioral economics.
5. ATM graffiti.