Citizens United: A Theoretical Evaluation

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.

Formal Theories of Special Interest Influence

“…Each theoretical approach commits scholars to a set of possible positive and normative implications, so the choice of theoretical framework ex ante is consequential for what inferences and conclusions are possible to claim ex post. Prato and Wolton 2017;Sloof 1999;Vanberg 2008;Wittman 2007). While this is an important and enlightening literature we have chosen to focus on influencing politicians to keep the scope of the article manageable and to more clearly highlight avenues of influencing policy.…”

Formal Theories of Special Interest Influence

“…Each theoretical approach commits scholars to a set of possible positive and normative implications, so the choice of theoretical framework ex ante is consequential for what inferences and conclusions are possible to claim ex post. Prato and Wolton 2017;Sloof 1999;Vanberg 2008;Wittman 2007). While this is an important and enlightening literature we have chosen to focus on influencing politicians to keep the scope of the article manageable and to more clearly highlight avenues of influencing policy.…”

After Citizens United: How outside spending shapes American democracy

“…To our knowledge, onlyPrato and Wolton (2017) andKlumpp (2014) explicitly model outside spending, under different assumptions and reaching normative conclusions.…”