Browsing by Subject "Campaign finance"
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Item Courts, campaigns, and corruption : an empirical evaluation of the “appearance of corruption” rationale for campaign finance regulation(2016-05) Rao, Nitya Tangada; Roberts, Brian E.; Shaw, Daron R., 1966-In Buckley v. Valeo, arguably their most important campaign finance decision, the United States Supreme Court argued that the appearance of political corruption alone might be sufficient to undermine the health of a representative democracy. There has been little empirical evidence to support this assertion, so to test this hypothesis, I fielded a novel survey containing different measures of factors influencing perceptions of corruption, perceptions about campaign contributions, support for campaign finance reform initiatives, perceptions of the frequency and nature of corruption, and perceptions of democratic health to roughly 1000 participants on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. I constructed a causal diagram representing the "appearance of corruption" rationale in Buckley v. Valeo and used structural equation modeling, observed-variable path modeling to evaluate that specific causal hypothesis with various survey items. I found that the data did not support the hypotheses derived from the appearance of corruption rationale. To further test the Supreme Court’s claim that perceptions of corruption affect political behavior, I regressed various measures of perceptions of the frequency of corruption on self-reported political participation and found no significant correlation, again suggesting that the appearance of corruption rationale has meager empirical support.Item The Influence of Big Donors on Congressional Behavior and Electoral Prospects(2013-11-18) Socker, Erica MarieThis research explores the connections between campaign contributions, congressional behavior, and electoral outcomes. Previous research on the role of money in politics has focused primarily on the influence of political action committees and other organized interests, despite the fact that individual contributions account for over 50 percent of the donations members of Congress receive. This research ad- dresses the influence members? financial ties with affluent individual donors has on their roll call voting, bill sponsorship and primary election prospects. The results suggest big donors shift members further to the ideological right and decrease their likelihood of introducing direct government spending bills in Congress. These financial ties also influence the electoral landscape for incumbents in the primary election by giving Republican incumbents an electoral edge and increasing the chances Democratic incumbents face a tough primary election battle. This research suggests individual donors influence political outcomes with implications for policy outcomes, representation, and party polarization.