Gauging (Perceived) Corruption

Chapter 3 aims to gauge both the reality of, as well as public opinion on, the central issue of corruption. It investigates public opinion on corruption among elected officials, source of corruption, effectiveness of laws and regulations in mitigating corruption, support for campaign finance reforms, etc. The data strongly suggest that people think corruption is rampant despite limited evidence that quid pro quo corruption is anything more than a minor problem. This fundamental attitude has not changed much in the wake of the Citizens United decision. Furthermore, they believe the problem is mostly intractable and that most of the commonly proposed reforms of the campaign finance system will not work. Nevertheless, they still support these reforms. Moving from simple descriptive data to more associational analyses, this chapter also explores the effect of campaign finance laws on campaign spending and then the effect of both on corruption attitudes. The results are not what the Court would have expected.

Perceived Corruption and Trust in Government

Chapter 4 examines the relationship between perceptions of corruption and trust in government. The analysis begins by reviewing variation in levels of trust over time, and proceeds to an estimation of the relationship between perceptions of corruption and trust, as posited by the Court. This chapter also tests the Court’s assumption that states with more substantial campaign finance regulations will evince greater trust in government. Finally, it examines the related notion—implicitly suggested by the Court’s teleology—that lower levels of campaign spending are likely to be associated with greater trust in government. The data are not consistently supportive of this line of reasoning. After accounting for endogeneity, the empirical model shows that perceived corruption does not have a significant impact on trust in government.

What Do Americans Know about Campaign Finance?

Chapter 2 establishes a baseline by reviewing public opinion concerning money and politics, pre– and post–Citizens United, focusing on what Americans know about money in politics and campaign spending. On the one hand, given that citizens are typically not well informed about politics, it should come as no surprise that they do not know all that much about candidate spending or campaign finance. On the other hand, the public is not completely off base with respect to its sense of money in politics, and this basic intuition is perhaps even sharper in the post–Citizens United era. The data suggest that while Americans know a little bit about campaign finance, there is no systematic correlation between the regulatory environment of the state and how much people in that state know about campaign finance.

Perceived Corruption and Political Participation

Chapter 5 shifts the focus to the final—and perhaps most important—element of the Court’s behavioral model: political participation. Adopting a broad and comprehensive scale of political participation that includes both voting as well as other forms of engagement, it first estimates the relationships between attitudes toward corruption and trust on participation. The data offer little support for the notion that those who see more corruption and those who are less trusting of government are less likely to participate. Equally important, campaign finance regulations and campaign spending have a minimal influence on political participation. In fact, increased spending appears to coincide with slightly more participation.

Campaign Contributions and Partisan Vote Choice

Chapter 6 investigates the effects of campaign finance information on partisan (candidate) vote choice, a separate interest advanced by the Buckley Court in the context of campaign finance disclosure laws. More specifically, survey-based experiments are used to ascertain the impact of information about the amount of money raised by a candidate for office, as well as the source of that money, on a respondent’s likelihood of casting a ballot for that candidate. The data indicate that the amount raised by a candidate matters much less than where that money comes from. In addition, the empirical analysis shows that partisans were often more influenced by information about their own candidate than about the candidate of the opposing party.

Whither Campaign Finance Jurisprudence?

Chapter 7 offers a discussion of the main results and a consideration of the political, policy, and jurisprudential implications of the study. It deliberates what happens in instances like this—when the Supreme Court fosters the construction of an entire edifice of laws and regulations that limit a fundamental right (free speech) based on an erroneous set of assumptions about political opinion and behavior. The role of social science in court decisions—particularly in the context of informing behavioral assumptions—is emphasized, along with a particular call for social scientists to investigate further the Buckley Court’s model.

The Appearance of Corruption

Chapter 1 describes the Supreme Court’s reasoning on campaign finance regulation, free speech, and political campaigns and then offers a chapter-by-chapter plan for testing the key assumptions underlying the Court’s reasoning. The behavioral model of the Buckley v. Valeo (1976) links individuals’ perceptions of corruption to their decisions to participate politically, hypothesizing that the greater an individual’s perception of corruption the less likely that person is to participate in the political process (e.g., vote) because of an erosion of trust in government. Based on these assumptions, the Court accepts the mitigation of corruption as the (lone) compelling state interest for limits on money in politics. Chapter 1 outlines how the authors will empirically explore the behavioral model posited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision.