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Interest Groups and Money

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Developments in American Politics 9

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Abstract

The chapter examines the role of interest groups and money in the American political system. Although the activity of interest groups is generally seen as essential to the functioning of a democratic system and the framers of the Constitution such as James Madison thought that interests could be made to balance each other, the inequalities which characterise interest groups in terms of money and access can also pose a threat to democracy. The chapter considers unequal representation from two channels of influence: contributions to election campaigns and lobbying. Efforts to control the role of money in politics have been profoundly weakened by a series of Supreme Court rulings which equated the freedom to spend money in campaigns to freedom of speech and struck down measures designed to regulate federal campaign expenditures. As a result, interest groups have come to play an ever more influential role in campaigns and Super PACs (a type of organization devoted to independent expenditure with no limits on the size of contributions) have grown in importance. Equally, the lobbying industry has grown substantially, begging serious questions around who has access to power and what impact unequal representation might have on government decisions.

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Further Reading

  • For those who are interested in the ideas behind campaign finance reform, La Raja and Schaffner’s Campaign Finance and Political Polarization (2015, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press) provides a comprehensive account of the history of campaign finance in the United States and the concerns about ideas behind candidate-centered as opposed to party-centered campaign funding. Primo and Milyo’s Campaign Finance & American Democracy: What the Public Really Thinks and Why It Matters (2020, Chicago: University of Chicago Press) provides an excellent survey on how public and political elites perceive campaign finance regulations and whether campaign finance reforms change public opinion about the quality of American democracy. An overview of the changes in campaign finance after the Citizens United ruling, such as the birth of Super PACs and legal constraints on the issue of coordination between Super PACs and candidates, can be found in Briffault’s ‘Super PACs’ (2011, Minnesota Law Review 96: 1644) and Briffault’s ‘Coordination Reconsidered’ (2013, Columbia Law Review 113: 88).

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  • There are numerous studies that examine the motivations and behaviors of different kinds of donors. For access-seeking PACs, Fouirnaies and Hall’s ‘How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees’ (2018, American Journal of Political Science 62.1: 132–147) examines how PACs change their donation patterns depending on politicians’ congressional committee assignments. Li’s ‘How Internal Constraints Shape Interest Group Activities: Evidence from Access-Seeking PACs’ (2018, American Political Science Review 112.4: 792–808) shows how donors to PACs strategically respond to donating behaviors of PACs. Barber, Canes-Wrone, and Thrower’s ‘Ideologically Sophisticated Donors: Which Candidates Do Individuals Contributors Finance?’ (2017, American Journal of Political Science 61.2: 271–288) looks at how the ideological and policy positions of candidates affect individual donors’ decisions to contribute. On the topic of the geography of donors, Gimpel, Lee, and Kaminski’s ‘The Political Geography of Campaign Contributions in American Politics’ (2006, Journal of Politics 68.3: 626–639) and Gimpel, Lee, and Pearson-Merkowitz’s ‘The Check Is in the Mail: Interdistrict Funding Flows in Congressional Elections’ (2008, American Journal of Political Science 52.2: 373–394) present excellent findings about how contributions from out-of-district donors shape the nomination process in the United States.

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  • For lobbying, Drutman’s The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (2015, New York: Oxford University Press) provides an excellent survey on the history of corporate lobbying and the reasons behind the rise of the political engagement of business interests. There are many papers that investigate the lobbying patterns of non-business interests. de Figueiredo and Silverman’s ‘Academic Earmarks and the Return to Lobbying’ (2006, The Journal of Law and Economics 49.2: 597–625) examine how lobbying spending by universities affects academic earmarks. Goldstein and You’s ‘Cities as Lobbyists’ (2017, American Journal of Political Science 61.4: 864–876) looks at lobbying activities of local governments at the federal level and Payson’s ‘Cities in the Statehouse: How Local Governments Use Lobbyists to Secure State Funding’ (2020, Journal of Politics 82.2: 403–417) studies local governments’ lobbying engagement at the state level.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Hye Young You

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  1. Hye Young You
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Correspondence to Hye Young You .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Gillian Peele

  2. Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Bruce E. Cain

  3. School of Social, Political and Global Studies, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK

    Jon Herbert

  4. School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

    Andrew Wroe

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You, H.Y. (2022). Interest Groups and Money. In: Peele, G., Cain, B.E., Herbert, J., Wroe, A. (eds) Developments in American Politics 9. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89740-6_6

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