Chapter 34 — Further Reading
The campaign-finance literature is enormous, partisan, and often more heat than light. The works below are the ones a serious reader should engage to form an informed view, deliberately spanning both sides of the doctrinal and policy debate. Reading at least one work from each side is the minimum civic obligation on this topic.
The "money corrupts" tradition (left-leaning, reform-oriented)
Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — And a Plan to Stop It (2011, updated 2015). The most influential reform-oriented book of the past fifteen years. Lessig argues that the American political system has developed a form of "dependence corruption" — Congress dependent on its donor base in ways that distort its responsibility to the people. Lessig coined or popularized much of the framework that subsequent reform advocates use. The argument is most compelling on agenda-setting and institutional dependency; it is more debatable on causal claims about specific votes. Read this even if you reject the prescription.
Richard L. Hasen, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections (2016). Hasen, an election-law scholar at UCLA, provides a comprehensive doctrinal and empirical treatment from the reformist perspective. Strong on the Buckley–Citizens United doctrinal lineage and on the case for a more equality-oriented First Amendment framework. Hasen also runs the Election Law Blog, which is the daily must-read for anyone serious about this domain.
Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016). Mayer's New Yorker reporting compiled into book form. Focuses on the Koch network, Mercers, and the broader infrastructure of conservative donor coordination. Reformers consider it definitive; critics argue it provides selective coverage (focusing on right-coded mega-donors and underplaying left-coded counterparts). Best read alongside coverage of Democratic-aligned mega-donor networks.
Robert Kaiser, So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government (2009). A Washington Post veteran's account of how Washington's lobbying and donor-influence apparatus expanded across the late twentieth century. Pre-Citizens United, but the structural picture remains highly relevant. Particularly strong on the K Street ecology around campaign-finance.
Adam Bonica, "Mapping the Ideological Marketplace" (American Journal of Political Science, 2014) and the DIME database. Bonica's empirical work using the DIME (Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections) is the most rigorous large-N analysis of donor ideology and behavior available. The data and methodology are publicly accessible at dime.stanford.edu. Anyone making quantitative claims about American campaign finance should be familiar with this work.
Justice John Paul Stevens, dissent in Citizens United v. FEC (2010). The 90-page dissent itself, available in the U.S. Reports volume or via Cornell's Legal Information Institute. Stevens's argument deserves direct reading rather than summary; whatever one's view of the majority, the dissent is a serious and historically important constitutional argument.
The "speech is speech" tradition (right-leaning and libertarian, anti-restriction)
Bradley A. Smith, Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform (2001). Smith, former FEC chairman and founder of the Institute for Free Speech (formerly Center for Competitive Politics), is the most articulate defender of the constitutional framework that produced Citizens United. The book pre-dates the case but lays out the First Amendment argument that the case ultimately adopted. Essential reading from the speech-protective side.
Floyd Abrams, The Soul of the First Amendment (2017). Abrams is the leading First Amendment litigator of his generation (Pentagon Papers case, Citizens United on the side of the petitioner). His book makes the case for an expansive reading of political speech protection grounded in long-standing First Amendment doctrine, not partisan preference. Particularly useful on the danger of carving out speech exceptions for "bad speakers."
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC (2010). Read alongside the Stevens dissent. The majority's First Amendment reasoning is more substantive than its political reputation suggests.
Cato Institute, Cato Handbook for Policymakers (campaign-finance chapter, regularly updated). A clear statement of the libertarian position on campaign finance: maximize speech, minimize regulation, rely on disclosure rather than restriction. The Handbook is freely available online and is updated each Congress.
Federalist Society policy papers on campaign finance. The Federalist Society's regular programming on First Amendment topics includes some of the most rigorous defenses of the Citizens United doctrinal framework. Available at fedsoc.org. Particularly notable: papers by Allen Dickerson, Trevor Burrus, and Brad Smith.
Institute for Free Speech research. ifs.org. Smith's organization publishes empirical and policy work from the speech-protective perspective. Frequently the source of the strongest counter-arguments to reform proposals.
Empirical campaign finance (mostly non-partisan)
Stephen Ansolabehere, John M. de Figueiredo, and James M. Snyder, "Why Is There So Little Money in U.S. Politics?" (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2003). The classic statement of the empirical puzzle: campaign contributions are small relative to what donors would pay if vote-buying were genuinely available. Their argument that donors give for consumption / expressive reasons more than instrumental reasons remains influential.
Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman, "Campaign Contributions Facilitate Access to Congressional Officials: A Randomized Field Experiment" (American Journal of Political Science, 2016). The most cited recent empirical study on access, using a randomized design that addresses many of the identification problems in the older literature.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (Perspectives on Politics, 2014). The widely cited paper on responsiveness inequality. Consequential and contested. Read alongside the methodological critiques (Branham, Soroka, and Wlezien 2017; Bashir 2015) for a fair view of what the paper does and does not establish.
Brennan Center for Justice, "Public Financing in American Elections" (recurring report series). brennancenter.org. The most comprehensive ongoing analysis of public-financing programs in the United States, including the NYC 8-to-1 match, Maine Clean Elections, Seattle vouchers, and Connecticut.
Campaign Finance Institute (now part of National Institute on Money in Politics). nimsp.org. Long-running primary source for campaign-finance data and analysis. Politically non-partisan; methodologically rigorous.
OpenSecrets.org. The Center for Responsive Politics's database, the most user-friendly entry point to FEC data for non-specialists. Indispensable for tracing specific candidates, races, donors, or industries.
Comparative campaign finance
Karl-Heinz Nassmacher, The Funding of Party Competition: Political Finance in 25 Democracies (2009). The standard comparative reference. Nassmacher's framework for categorizing campaign-finance regimes is widely used.
Kevin Casas-Zamora, Paying for Democracy: Political Finance and State Funding for Parties (2005). Strong on Latin American and developing-country regimes; useful counterpoint to U.S.- and Western-Europe-centric analyses.
Pippa Norris and Andrea Abel van Es, Checkbook Elections? Political Finance in Comparative Perspective (2016). Recent comparative volume, covering the major peer democracies and several developing democracies.
Primary documents
The text of Buckley v. Valeo (1976), 424 U.S. 1. Long but readable. The contribution-expenditure distinction is articulated directly.
The text of Citizens United v. FEC (2010), 558 U.S. 310. Both the Kennedy majority and the Stevens dissent are essential.
FEC.gov. The Federal Election Commission's website. Filings are searchable; data is downloadable. The transparency infrastructure of American campaign finance is one of the most extensive in the world; using it is itself an exercise in civic competence.
Recommended order for a serious reader
If you have time for only six items, read in this order:
- The Stevens dissent in Citizens United (the case itself).
- Smith, Unfree Speech.
- Lessig, Republic, Lost.
- Hasen, Plutocrats United.
- Mayer, Dark Money — alongside critical reviews from the right.
- Abrams, The Soul of the First Amendment.
If you have time for two: the Stevens dissent and the Kennedy majority in Citizens United, read together as paired arguments. The case is the cleanest doctrinal entry to the entire debate, and reading the two sides directly is more useful than reading any number of summaries.