Suchergebnisse

AbstractCampaign finance compliance and transparency reveal important non-policy attributes that voters care about. Using vignette and conjoint survey experiments, I show that voters in primary elections incorporate transparency and compliance considerations into candidate selection. This effect persists even where the candidate shares the respondents' preferred policy positions. The findings bring campaign finance transparency and compliance into the scholarly conversation about candidate valence. They also have implications for our campaign finance jurisprudence and suggest that courts should expand their understanding of the informational benefits of campaign finance disclosures and compliance information.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of government corruption and the transparency laws designed to prevent and expose it. Specifically, it analyzes the political conditions under which we expect to see transparency laws emerge, the strength of the laws we expect under different mixes political power, and the economic and political effects that result from transparency laws. It analyzes three cases of transparency laws: whistleblower laws; bounty laws, in particular the false claims act; and campaign finance transparency laws. These laws vary in terms of the burden and risk assumed by individuals availing themselves of the information provided by the laws. It finds, using quantitative methods supplemented by expert interviews, that the high burden, high risk laws are passed for politically predictable reasons, though they are less likely to have an actual effect in terms of political or economic outcomes. Low burden, low risk laws, however, have a clearer impact. In addition to using large datasets on political advertising, county and local bond ratings and yields, and campaign finance disclosure laws, the project contributes original data on state-level whistleblower laws and local-level government corruption, as well as providing an update to existing data on state-level political competition.

AbstractDo audits by executive agencies impact the behavior of those audited? Does revealing negative information about legislators affect electoral results and behavior? Institutions that encourage transparency, such as campaign finance disclosure, influence mass and elite behavior. Campaign finance transparency provides information to voters during legislative campaigns about the character of candidates, and this information affects voter and legislator behavior. The US Federal Election Commission conducted random audits of 10% of US House members in the 1970s. This FEC program is the only randomized experiment a US agency has conducted on federal legislators and their electorates. We find that audited legislators were more likely to retire and faced more competitive reelections relative to the control group, an effect that is amplified among incumbents whose audits revealed campaign finance violations. Further, campaign finance scandals are associated with lower incumbent vote shares and approval and more negative advertisements in the 2000s.