Are Campaign Contributions Investment in the Political Marketplace or Individual Consumption? Or "Why Is There So Little Money in Politics?"
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Author(s)
ANSOLABEHERE, STEPHEN
DE FIGUEIREDO, JOHN M.
SNYDER, JAMES M.
Date Issued
May 9, 2003
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4272-02
Abstract
In this paper, we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy-buying,
but are rather a form of political participation and consumption. We summarize the
data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our
econometric analysis that individuals, not special interests, are the main source of
campaign contributions. Moreover, we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal
good, dependent upon income, and campaign contributions as a percent of GDP have
not risen appreciably in over 100 years - if anything, they have probably fallen. We
then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular
notion that contributions buy legislators' votes. Finally, we illustrate that when one
controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects, there is little relationship
between money and legislator votes. Thus, the question is not why there is so little
money politics, but rather why organized interests give at all. We conclude by offering
potential answers to this question
Subjects
Campaign Finance
Campaign Contributions
Corporate Political Activity
Political Economy
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