Campaign Finance and Political Polarization : When Purists Prevail

Brian F Schaffner, Raymond J La Raja

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780472900039
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Campañas políticas y elecciones

Efforts to reform the U.S. campaign finance system typically focus on the corrupting influence of large contributions. Yet, as Raymond J. La Raja and Brian F. Schaffner argue, reforms aimed at cutting the flow of money into politics have unintentionally favored candidates with extreme ideological agendas and, consequently, fostered political polarization.Drawing on data from 50 states and the U.S. Congress over 20 years, La Raja and Schaffner reveal that current rules allow wealthy ideological groups and donors to dominate the financing of political campaigns. In order to attract funding, candidates take uncompromising positions on key issues and, if elected, take their partisan views into the legislature. As a remedy, the authors propose that additional campaign money be channeled through party organizations—rather than directly to candidates—because these organizations tend to be less ideological than the activists who now provide the lion's share of money to political candidates. Shifting campaign finance to parties would ease polarization by reducing the influence of "purist" donors with their rigid policy stances.La Raja and Schaffner conclude the book with policy recommendations for campaign finance in the United States. They are among the few non-libertarians who argue that less regulation, particularly for political parties, may in fact improve the democratic process.

CHAPTER 1

Campaign Finance Laws, Purists, and Pragmatists: Who Benefits?

Politics in Washington appears hopelessly polarized. The widening ideological gap in the U.S. Congress has received most of the attention (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006; Rohde 1991), but similar dynamics have been playing out in many state legislatures (Shor and McCarty 2011). While the consequences of such polarization are not always clear, there seems little doubt of one effect: partisan rancor in legislatures has increased dramatically. In recent decades we have observed an unusual degree of policy gridlock and the deterioration of Congress as a deliberative body (Mann and Ornstein 2012). A complete lack of compromise appears to block government from acting on pressing issues such as immigration or tax reform, which are widely acknowledged in both parties as ripe for policy transformation.

The problems do not stop there. A strong case has been made that policy gridlock exacerbates wealth inequality through a basic failure to adjust policies to new economic and demographic realities (Hacker and Pierson 2010; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006). Perhaps most worrisome for the long-term health of American democracy is the possibility that our institutions do not adequately represent citizens, with parties standing for highly ideological policies that are at odds with the preferences of the vast majority of voters (Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2005).

Why We Write

As close observers of American politics, we worry about polarization and its potential impact on the democratic process. That is why we are writing this book. We see no magic remedy for this problem, but we can help identify underlying causes, which might lead to fruitful reforms. Our experience in analyzing elections and governing suggests to us that a link might exist between the ideological distancing of the parties and the weakened state of party organizations in the United States. In an era when money is an essential electoral resource, party organizations have often struggled to finance politics because campaign finance laws and court jurisprudence constrain political parties more tightly than they limit interest groups or individual donors.

Party-Centered versus Candidate-Centered Financing

Given our concerns, the question posed in this book is a practical one, although it is informed by theory and research about political parties. Would a party-centered campaign finance system improve our politics? In other words, we ask whether rules giving political parties more freedom to raise and spend money on candidates would attenuate the excesses of ideological polarization between the major political parties.

We present our detailed response to this question in the remaining chapters of this book. Our argument is that financially strong party organizations should reduce party polarization. It may seem odd that making parties stronger organizationally would abate their programmatic intensity, but we will present evidence that this is so. As we explain in the following chapters, party organizations behave somewhat differently from other political actors in the campaign finance system. Specifically, parties are the sole political organizations whose primary goal is to win elections. We will argue that this unique characteristic forces parties to exercise a moderating effect on those who win office. One of the main thrusts of our argument will be that the introduction of party-friendly campaign finance laws would moderate the distancing of the major political parties in Congress and the states.

Aside from seeming paradoxical, our position may not be popular. Political parties are not the most admired institutions in American life. According to a recent poll by Rassmussen, 53 percent of U.S. voters think that neither party in Congress is the party of the American people.¹ The disdain for political parties is an American tradition dating to the Founding and expressed anxiously by George Washington in his Farewell Address; Washington admonished his compatriots to shun the “incongruous projects of faction,” which often serve “a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community.”²

Despite Washington’s urgent call to avoid organizing by faction, political parties soon became mainstays of American democracy. However, their place in the political culture took a decidedly negative turn during the Progressive era of the early 20th century when political reformers recast political parties as institutions that damaged democracy and governance (Milkis 2009; Milkis and Mileur 1999; Rosenblum 2008). To this day, the image of the corrupt party machine lives on, even during an era when machines and party bosses are rarities. Many citizens continue to visualize these quasi-public organizations as doing business behind closed doors and interposing themselves between voters and candidates in ways that thwart the will of the people. The idea of empowering these organizations, which have been the object of distrust during the past 100 years or so, may seem uncomfortable to many readers.

Our position may also be unpopular because our findings suggest that increasing or entirely removing limits on how much money party organizations can raise and spend would be a step toward reducing polarization. As we will see in chapter 6, this is quite at odds with the opinion of a significant segment of the public, which supports the imposition of low contribution limits on groups such as political parties—or even the prohibition of contributions by such groups entirely. This opinion reflects the understandable fear that allowing parties to raise a lot of money will increase the potential for corruption, or at least afford moneyed interests an undue influence contrary to the public interest. There is the perception that allowing parties to take large donations increases the risk that wealthy individuals and special interests will have their way in statehouses across the nation. This very concern was at the heart of arguments for Congress to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold Act, which banned so-called party “soft money.”³

We are sympathetic to such concerns and we acknowledge that our book cannot completely address the problem of corruption and undue influence.⁴ However, we will make the argument that the intense focus of campaign finance policy on preventing corruption has blinded policymakers to the broader effects of these policies on the political system. We will argue that a zealous anticorruption approach can lead to unintended negative consequences. We will make the case that this approach reflects an overly romanticized view that democracy is solely about individual citizens having a direct and equal voice in public affairs (Pildes 2015). A less naïve view is that democracy functions primarily through intermediary organizations—like parties, interest groups, and the media—that help inform, mobilize, and channel citizen preferences (Cain 2014). We make the point that the anticorruption strategy, which seeks to “level down” contributions through low limits, has had the ironic effect of pushing political money toward obscurely named groups, sometimes called “super PACs,” that now pervade federal and state campaigns. We are concerned because such groups lack transparency and accountability. But we have another major concern.

Campaign Finance Reforms and Polarization

A major hypothesis in this book is that laws that push money away from party organizations to partisan interest groups have accentuated the highly polarized political environment in many American states. We expect too that our findings can legitimately be generalized beyond the states to the U.S. Congress, where many of the same polarizing forces are clearly at work. Through our discussion of the research and observations supporting this hypothesis, we hope to broaden the policy debate beyond a narrow focus on preventing corruption, without repudiating longstanding efforts to maintain integrity and equality in the political system through campaign finance reform.

Our study depends on a system-level approach that is attentive to the broader flows of political money rather than the one-to-one exchanges that occupy most research on the political influence of donors. Instead of studying the dyadic relationship between donors and officeholders (e.g., to see if money buys votes or effort), we propose a holistic framework that applies itself to what is referred to as the “hydraulics” of campaign finance rules. In our view, regulations do not tend to keep money out of politics but mostly redirect its currents through different channels. We have mentioned the super PACs that raise and spend millions of dollars outside the formal structure of campaign finance laws.⁵ These groups arose, in part, because the limits on contributions to candidates and parties were tightened with the BCRA of 2002. Money constrained from flowing directly to candidates and parties was squeezed in another direction.

Historical data also suggest that the relationship between campaign finance laws and campaign spending in U.S. elections is surprisingly inelastic. One study shows a roughly linear relationship over time between GDP and election-related spending, suggesting in economic terms that campaign spending is akin to a consumption activity (Ansolabehere, deFigueiredo, and Snyder 2003). In other words, spending is relatively immune to laws that attempt to restrain it. Campaign finance laws may change the paths that money takes, but the total amount in the system appears to depend on other factors, such as the availability of money, the electoral stakes, and political competition (Hogan 2000).

The crux of our argument is that, although laws fail to stop the flow of money into politics, they do affect the channels through which it flows. By constraining one set of players—namely party committees—campaign finance laws force candidates to rely more heavily on other sources of funds. These funds may come from individuals, interest groups, and a variety of “party-like” organizations that emerge to replace the formal parties. These nonparty actors may all be partisans in the broader coalition, but their priorities differ from those of the party organization. And as we will see, by making candidates more reliant on nonparty supporters than on party committees, the rules have broad effects on the electoral system and governing. We will demonstrate that one of these effects is to push candidates away from the center and toward the ideological poles.

In our view, the architecture of campaign finance laws in most American states is not party-friendly. The laws have institutionalized a “candidate-centered” system of financing, which encourages candidates to reach out to nonparty sources for funds. At the same time, the role of party organizations has been circumscribed; they are permitted to give only relatively small amounts of money to candidates precisely because reformers fear that party organizations might be used as conduits to funnel large contributions to them. As we have noted, the unintended consequence of imposing lower limits on parties is that candidates seek a greater share of donations directly from highly ideological individual and group donors.

Perhaps more consequentially, under this system “the center cannot hold”: the party coalition unbundles organizationally. That is, partisan factions that compose the party, including party-aligned issue groups (e.g., environmental groups, gun rights advocates, etc.), choose to engage directly and independently in elections rather than work through the umbrella of the formal party organization. In this way, constraints on parties enable partisan interest groups to assume a larger and less constrained role in elections. The dynamic is especially acute in states where control of the legislature hangs in the balance and where partisan organizing is imperative. The outcome is to tilt the playing field toward ideological candidates favored by “policy demanders,” and to put pressure on moderate officeholders to defend highly ideological policy positions or risk loss of financial support.

To be clear, we are not arguing that the candidate-centered campaign finance system caused partisan polarization. There has been much else going on, and scholars continue to unravel the dynamic that spurred the distancing of the parties. In the category of “causes” one might include changes in demography and technology, or any range of institutional transformations, including how candidates are nominated by an increasingly ideological partisan electorate.⁶ We also recognize that the nationalization of policy issues may have allowed ideological debates to seep into the politics of statehouses where such debates were muted before.

Our theoretical argument about partisan polarization builds on an emerging scholarly view of political parties as an extended network of partisan activists who care deeply about some contentious issues (Bawn et al. 2012). These activists have worked through interest groups and party-affiliated organizations to press their cause with candidates and officeholders. They are influential because they volunteer for campaigns, attend conventions, provide expertise, make endorsements, mobilize their constituencies in primary elections, and raise money. Many of them run for office too. The financing of campaigns is but one element in their drive to shape the direction of party politics and policies. But we think it is an important one, given how critical money is in financing modern campaigns.

For this reason, we think campaign finance laws matter greatly.

Political Parties and Democracy

We start with the premise that political parties are key institutions in a democracy because they help mediate between citizens and governing elites. In theory and practice, parties help link government to citizens by recruiting candidates, waging campaigns that inform and mobilize voters, and ultimately organizing the government to implement broadly supported policies. Voters generally comprehend what the major American parties stand for with respect to principles about the role of government, and they have the opportunity during elections to hold party candidates accountable for campaign promises and policy outputs. Because the party wants to control government, it is motivated to tailor policies that will attract votes and win elections. Moreover, parties typically serve as interest aggregators that pull together various factions into a coalition that pursues broader public purposes than any single faction. In this way, parties help to overcome the inherent fragmentation of interests in a diverse country by forging alliances among constituent groups; this gives the parties legitimacy in claiming to govern for the common good.

To be sure, political parties have a controversial history, rife with examples of monumental corruption and “back-room deals” that serve narrow interests rather than the wider public. But, on the whole, the major American political parties have tended to be broad-based entities with mechanisms strong enough to hold political elites accountable. Despite shortcomings, their enduring party “brand” and institutionalized roles across all levels of government have promoted stability, collective action, and responsiveness in the American political system.

Many contemporary observers seem to blame the parties themselves for pushing politics to the extremes. A common (if inaccurate) argument is that parties have insulated themselves through redistricting so they do not have to be responsive to the broader electorate.⁷ Two noted economists specifically indict the so-called party duopoly on campaign money for the current climate of hyperpartisanship in American politics and the failure of government to tackle problems (Hubbard and Kane 2013). They claim that the FECA reforms of 1974 enriched the parties and cut money off from individual candidates and groups that might have challenged party orthodoxy. For them, the decision in Citizens United v. FEC allowing corporations and unions to spend without limits ended a “four decade period of repression of independent voices” (133).

We believe that such thinking reflects a one-dimensional understanding of political parties. In particular, critics who fear financially well-off political parties fail to understand that “the party” is made up of many factions and is hardly monolithic in its pursuit of political goals. Some factions focus intensely on influencing specific policies while others tend to engage in the game of winning elections. We think parties behave differently based, in part, on which factions control resources within the party. In our view, parties (like any organization) survive and thrive based on the availability of resources, and the factions that provide those resources have more power over the direction of the broader party.⁸ Importantly, for our argument, the rules on how people control and use resources affect the leverage of various factions within the party.

Two Conceptions of Political Parties

Our theory of resource dependency is informed by two different conceptions of political parties. One view sees parties primarily as unitary actors, controlled by “insiders” who seek electoral gains that will give them power and its perquisites. The other view sees parties controlled mostly by “outsiders” who work through issue coalitions to advance policy objectives. At this point, it would be helpful for us to explain more clearly what we mean by “parties” and how these two conceptions of parties inform our analysis.

PARTIES CONTROLLED BY INSIDERS

There is a lengthy scholarly tradition that views political parties as controlled largely by leaders inside the party organization (Michels 1949; Ostrogorski and Clarke 1902). These party leaders might emerge in the legislature, as is common in the United States today, or they might be unelected party bureaucrats, as in much of Europe. Historically, 19th-century party committees in the United States, like those in Europe, were controlled by nonelected officials. These were the local party “bosses” of the machine era. With the weakening of local organizations during the Progressive era, party leaders in legislatures have assumed more responsibility for recruiting candidates and supporting them in elections.

The primary vehicle for partisan activity remains the party organization, although the contemporary party is less oriented than in earlier years toward providing patronage to campaign workers in exchange for their support. Moreover, the modern party organization is chiefly a technical operation for waging political campaigns rather than a broader source of social activity, as it was in the past.⁹ To be sure, the party continues to hold meetings and conventions to rally activists around party platforms and (in some states) preprimary nominations; but day-to-day activities are carried out by experienced campaign professionals, called “executive directors,” appointed by a party chair. The party chair, in turn, is accountable to an executive party committee that includes elected officials, donors, and activists.

The main objective of insiders is typically to use the party committee to win elections. Only by winning elections and pursuing ...