Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Interests, Resources, Corruption

I probably agree more than disagree with Matt Yglesias in his campaign against privately funded inauguration parties:
I think the corruption involved in this sort of thing is considerably clearer and more objectionable than with campaign contributions. Energy policy is a subject on which people have substantial good faith disagreements, and you would expect oil companies to back the election bids of candidates who hold views that are favorable to their interests. This creates a deplorable structural imbalance in politics, but it’s not the same as bribing the politicians.

By contrast, picking up the tab for Rick Perry to throw himself a big party seems fundamentally similar to buying Rick Perry a nice car, paying for Rick Perry’s daughter’s sweet sixteen party, or passing him a garbage bag full of cash...The existence of a lavish party is fundamentally a private benefit, and having outside interests pay for it seems a lot like bribery.
A couple of caveats, however. One is that whether or not campaign contributions create a "deplorable structural imbalance" is an empirical question, and at the end of the day it's not at all clear, in my reading of the literature, that it's an "imbalance" that we need to worry about. Campaign money is only one resource that's distributed unequally, and not necessarily the most important one. It's worth studying because permanent, substantively important structural balances are possible, but that doesn't mean they exist -- and certainly not across all issue areas.

Second, regardless of whether Yglesias is correct here in a theoretical way, in practical terms I doubt that it matters much. There's no conceivable world in which the interests funding inaugural events do not have good access to Rick Perry, and probably no conceivable world in which the interests funding the inaugural do not have good access to any governor. That's not just because they have money; it's because people who do this sort of thing tend to represent important interests in the state, and governors tend to be responsive to important interests in their states.

That's why when it comes to reform, I'm less interested in restricting this sort of thing, or even in mandating full and meaningful disclosure (which is nice in a way, but in practice doesn't really seem to do all that much good), than in finding ways for people without obvious resources to get a fair hearing. One way to do that is, in campaign finance, to provide floors, not ceilings: by making basic two-party competition work in more districts and more elections, it becomes more likely that parties will seek out (and therefore listen to) new voters and their interests.

Even if it were interpreted to allow far more restrictions than are available under Buckley v. Valeo, the First Amendment and practical politics will ensure that those interests with resources that happen to be especially valuable in politics will get a full hearing. The trick, in my view, isn't to shut up those interests; it's to find ways for other interests to get a full hearing, too.

7 comments:

  1. There's no conceivable world in which the interests funding inaugural events do not have good access to Rick Perry, and probably no conceivable world in which the interests funding the inaugural do not have good access to any governor.

    Yes, but the reality is that inaugural events may be funded by those interests, and you decline to take part at your peril.

    A hypothetical: Both A, Inc. and B, Inc. are asked to contribute to the funding of an inaugural ball. Both corporations are well-connected and have access to the governor and key legislators. Both corporations are involved in industries that can benefit substantially from changes to state law.

    A, Inc. contributes $200,000 to the governor's ball, but B, Inc. declines to contribute. Both corporations will still enjoy their access to the governor. But which corporation do you think would have better chance to influence state law in the future?

    Put it another way:

    Why would a rational corporate entity in a competitive industry - one that prizes efficiency and profit maximization - bother to spend large sums of money on this sort of thing if it didn't "matter much" to the bottom line?

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  2. "Campaign money is only one resource that's distributed unequally, and not necessarily the most important one."

    I'd be interested to hear what you think is the most important...

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  3. Well, resources are important if they affect votes. Money may do that, although the effects are iffy in many cases. Group endorsements can be important, too. So can time, expertise, or reputation. What's most important depends on the kind of election and the circumstances.

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  4. Yes, but the reality is that inaugural events may be funded by those interests, and you decline to take part at your peril

    This seems to imply that such events amount more to a shakedown than a bribe - if you are a well heeled interest, dissing an inaugural event may reduce your access.

    Which, in turn, makes such events a sort of tax on well heeled interests. They may be offended at being taxed in this way, but why should anyone else much care?

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  5. I enjoyed this post, but I think it's a great example of what Andrew Sprung was critiquing JB about a couple of weeks ago. It focuses narrowly on mechanics -- what are the links between different techniques of voter mobilization and corporate influence that affect specific election or policy outcomes. And it misses the big problem with the in-your-face advertisement that businesses are linked at the hip with the folks who are running the government on behalf, at least in theory, of some sort of notion of public good. (Whether the business-government link is voluntary or in some sense coerced doesn't really matter).

    The elephant in the room is called "legitimacy." Granted, it's difficult as all get-out to define or measure, but it's a critical element of any effective regime of governance, especially representative democracies. So in the absence of measurable causal links, we may shrug our shoulders at what looks like goo-goo hyper-ventilating about corporate "corruption" of the electoral or governance process. But widely-shared perceptions of "corruption" can be corrosive to the system in ways that don't show up in a given election or new regulation.

    For example, Citizens United may have been just a (belated) recognition of how the world really works, and post-mortems on corporate donations may "prove" that it will have little or no effect. But it felt like a punch in the gut because it seemed to be a giant shift away from core values about civic participation that used to be considered part of the critical glue that holds our democracy together. What's the long-run impact of abandoning those core values (even if they are mostly convenient myths)?

    I'd like to see JB acknowledge a bit more often the possibility that there are intangibles at work. And that beyond the to-and-fro of election mechanics and interest group politics there are broader issues concerning values and the place of citizens and interests and discourse in the political economy as a whole.

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  6. @nadezhda - That is a really interesting point, and I look forward to JB's response. I am no goo-goo, and am untroubled by minor corruption, but to the extent that people ARE troubled (or define 'minor' differently), it has consequences quite independent of those attributed to corruption per se.

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  7. nadezhda,

    I don't know. I mean, obviously if you (and others) report feeling some way about something, that's real, and it counts. OTOH, it's the big country problem -- about as many people approved of (using your example) Citizens United as were opposed to it, and most people never heard of or cared about it. So I'm not saying that you're wrong, but the fact that some felt strongly is only evidence, not conclusive evidence.

    On the larger issue...I am still intending to respond to Andrew S.'s critique, so stay tuned.

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