Research

In this article, Joel M. Gora examines the much debated Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which, in legitimizing money spent to influence elections as a constitutionally protected form of speech, upheld a bevy of speech-stifling campaign finance regulations, including federal limits on campaign contributions to candidates. In his analysis, Gora notes that the effect of these contribution limits has been to aid the incumbency advantage in elections. In addition, Gora finds fault with the failure to raise federal contribution limits since they were originally enacted then-25 years prior, completely neglecting inflationary market trends. This article continues by extensively highlighting the manner in which campaign finance laws have consistently failed to achieve their goals. Since its publication in 1999, Gora has concluded that the easing of restrictions on political parties is the best route to a more efficient and effective political system. Furthermore, although he offers support for a moderated system of taxpayer financed campaigns in this article, Gora has since reversed his opinion and no longer supports taxpayer financed elections due to their ineffective and partially unconstitutional nature. Nevertheless, this powerful review of the Buckley v. Valeo decision illuminates the negative consequences it has had on political participation in American elections.

Despite all the work on how campaign donations influence a politician’s behavior, the nagging question of whether contributions alter how a politician votes or whether these contributions constitute support for like-minded individuals remains unresolved. By combining past campaign contributions literature with work on politicians intrinsically valuing policy outcomes, the authors offer a simple test that examines how politicians’ voting patterns change when they retire and no longer face the threat of lost campaign contributions. If contributions are causing individual politicians to vote differently, there should be systematic changes in voting behavior when future contributions are eliminated. In contrast, if contributors donate to candidates who intrinsically value the same policies, there should be no changes in how a politician votes during the last period. After testing 661 congressmen, who served in the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1990, the authors strongly reject the notion that campaign contributions buy politicians’ votes. Their estimates demonstrate a remarkable degree of stability in voting patterns over time, thus lending support to past work emphasizing that it is costly for ideological politicians to alter their positions.

In the wake of recent reports of questionable campaign finance practices have come ever more draconian proposals to “reform” the campaign finance system. Those proposals pose a disturbing threat to the individual political freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. Under current precedents, none of them could survive a First Amendment challenge.