Center for Competitive Politics

Cato Briefing Paper no. 96, 2006
Executive Director Stephen M. Hoersting’s briefing paper for Cato Institute questions the constitutionality and wisdom of regulating independent Section 527 organizations. He believes that measures to make independent section 527 organizations into "political committees" under the Federal Election Campaign Act, would leave much activity unregulated and would induce a shift of activity from one legal structure to another, thus rendering any perceived partisan advantage arising from the measures improbable or incalculable. Therefore, says Hoersting, organizations engaged in independent speech and association with no connection to candidates or officeholders cannot be made to register with the Federal Election Commission simply because they mention candidates.

This Is Reform? Predicting the Impact of the New Campaign Financing Regulations

Published on November 20, 2002
by Patrick Basham

File Under: Contributions & Limits, Political Committees & 527s

Cato Briefing Paper No. 78
McCain-style campaign finance regulation is the new campaign reality. But what exactly will this reformist utopia look like? Assessing the "reformed" campaign of the future against the stated desires and expectations of the principal campaign finance regulators and their media supporters, this paper predicts the most important changes in political campaigning, changes that will be experienced for the first time during the 2003–04 electoral cycle.

Are PAC Contributions and Lobbying Linked? New Evidence from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act

Published on July 8, 2002
by Micky Tripathi, Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder

File Under: Lobbying Regulation, Political Committees & 527s

Business and Politics, 2002, vol. 4, issue 2
This paper uses newly available data from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act to assess the argument that PAC contributions are used to gain access to legislators.

Corporate PAC Campaign Contributions in Perspective

Published on April 10, 2000
by Jeffrey Milyo, David Primo, and Timothy Groseclose

File Under: Contributions & Limits, Political Committees & 527s

Business and Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2000
There is a vast empirical literature on the allocation of corporate PAC contributions in Congressional elections and the influence that these contributions have on the policy-making process. The attention given to PAC contributions is far in excess of their actual importance. Corporate PAC contributions account for about 10% of Congressional campaign spending and major corporations allocate far more money to lobbying or philanthropy than their affiliated PACs make in contributions.

PACs and Parties

Published on January 3, 2000
by Larry J. Sabato

File Under: Political Committees & 527s, Political Parties

Political money: deregulating American politics, selected writings on campaign finance reform/edited by Annelise Anderson. Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 459
This chapter first appeared in Money, Elections, and Democracy: Reforming Congressional Campaign Finance, edited by Margaret Lotus Nugent and John R. Johannes (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 187–204. In "PACs and Parties," Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and the author of several books on the American political process, considers the relationship between political action committees and political parties, especially since the passage of the campaign finance legislation of the 1970s.