Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T19:00:55.439Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Citizens United: A Theoretical Evaluation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2017

Carlo Prato  and
Stephane Wolton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The 2010 US Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United v. Federal Electoral Commission lifted restrictions on the funding by unions and corporations of groups engaging in independent political advertising (outside spending). Many have criticized the majority opinion’s premise that outside spending cannot corrupt or distort the electoral process. Fewer have examined the implications of this decision under the Court’s assumptions. Using a game-theoretic model of electoral competition, we show that informative outside spending by a group whose policy preferences are partially aligned with the electorate may reduce voter welfare. This negative effect is more likely when policy information is highly valuable for the electorate or congruence between the group and voters is high. We further show that the regulatory environment produced by the Court’s decision is always suboptimal: the electorate would be better off if either groups were allowed to coordinated with candidates or if outside spending was banned altogether.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 567 - 574
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Carlo Prato, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, 420 W. 118th St., New York, NY 10027 ([email protected]). Stephane Wolton, Department of Government, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE ([email protected]). The authors thank Ethan Bueno de Mesquita as well as conference participants at the Conference in Honor of Norman Schofield at Washington University, Saint Louis. All remaining errors are the authors’ responsibility. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2017.7

References

Ansolabehere, Stephen, Tripathi, Micky, and Snyder, James M. Jr. 2002. ‘Are PAC Contributions and Lobbying Linked? New Evidence From the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act’. Business and Politics 4(2):131–155.Google Scholar
Ashworth, Scott, and Shotts, Kenneth W.. 2010. ‘Does Informative Media Commentary Reduce Politicians’ Incentives to Pander?’. Journal of Public Economics 94(11):838–847.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boleslavsky, Raphael, and Cotton, Christopher. 2015. ‘Information and extremism in elections’. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 7(1):165–207.Google Scholar
Brooks, Deborah Jordan, and Murov, Michael. 2012. ‘Assessing Accountability in a Post-Citizens United Era’. American Politics Research 40(3):383–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, In-Koo, and Kreps, David M.. 1987. ‘Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria’. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 102(2):179–221.Google Scholar
Citizens United v. Federal Electoral Commission (FEC). 2010. 08-205 (558 U.S. 310).Google Scholar
Coate, Stephen, and Morris, Stephen. 1995. ‘On the form of transfers to special interests’. Journal of political Economy 103(6):1210–1235.Google Scholar
Dalton, Philip, and McIlwain, Charlton. 2011. ‘Third-Party Hatchet Ads: An Exploratory Content Study Comparing Third-Party and Candidate Spots From the 2004 Presidential Election’. Atlantic Journal of Communication 19(3):129–151.Google Scholar
Dewan, Torun, and Hortala-Vallve, Rafael. 2016. ‘Electoral competition, control and learning’. British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming). Available at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68258/, accessed 25 March 2017.Google Scholar
Ely, Jeffrey C, and Välimäki, Juuso. 2003. ‘Bad reputation’ The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(3):785–814.Google Scholar
Fox, Justin, and Van Weelden, Richard. 2012. ‘Costly transparency’ Journal of Public Economics 96(1):142–150.Google Scholar
Grossman, Gene M., and Helpman, Elhanan. 2001. Special Interest Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.Google Scholar
Hall, Richard L., and Deardorff, Alan V.. 2006. ‘Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy’. The American Political Science Review 100(1):69–84.Google Scholar
Heineman, Ben W. Jr. 2012. ‘Super PACs: The WMDs of Campaign Finance’. The Atlantic, 6 January. Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/super-pacs-the-wmds-of-campaign-finance/250961/, accessed 24 April 2016.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, David D. 2010. ‘Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Ruling’. New York Times, 21 January, p. A1. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22donate.html, accessed 24 April 2016.Google Scholar
Klumpp, Tilman. 2014. ‘Populism, Partisanship, and the Funding of Political Campaigns.Working Paper. Available at https://sites.ualberta.ca/~klumpp/docs/populism.pdf, accessed 25 March 2017.Google Scholar
Potters, Jan, and vanWinden, Frans. 1992. ‘Lobbying and Asymmetric Information’. Public Choice 74(3):269–292.Google Scholar
Prato, Carlo, and Strulovici, Bruno. 2016. ‘The Hidden Cost of Direct Democracy: How Ballot Initiatives Affect Politicians’ Selection and Incentives’. Journal of Theoretical Politics, Available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0951629816650762, accessed 29 June 2016. Google Scholar
Prat, Andrea. 2005. ‘The Wrong Kind of Transparency’. The American Economic Review 95(3):862.Google Scholar
Snyder, James M. 1989. ‘Election goals and the allocation of campaign resources’. Econometrica 637–660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SpeechNow v. Federal Election Commission (FEC). 2010. 08-5223.Google Scholar
Wolton, Stephane. 2016. ‘Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?’. Working Paper. Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2285854, accessed 25 March 2017.Google Scholar