In the Shadows of Sunlight: The Effects of Transparency on State Political Campaigns

Wood, Abby K.; Spencer, Douglas M.

doi:10.1089/elj.2016.0365

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…A longer simulation would allow for the inclusion of a voter element such that hypothesized benefits of disclosure could be measured and discussed with students, particularly in relation to the types of costs discussed previously. It also could make possible original research to contribute additional findings to a current and important discussion/debate about disclosure requirements (Carpenter et al 2014;Carpenter andMilyo 2012-2013;Gilbert and Aiken 2015;Mayer 2014;Wood and Spencer 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Campaign finance, of course, is a large and debated topic, spanning candidate and ballot-issue contexts; recent US Supreme Court decisions (e.g., Citizens United v. FEC); the role of money in politics (Gaughan 2016;Gerken 2014;Krumholz 2013;Mayer 2016); and the efficacy of disclosure (Hasen 2011;Munger 2009;Primo 2013;Primo and Milyo 2006;Wood and Spencer 2016)-to name only a few. By necessity, a simulation created to be implemented within the confines of one class meeting must be narrowly focused.…”

Section: Simulating Campaign Financementioning

confidence: 99%

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Simulated Complexity: A New Classroom Simulation to Teach about Campaign-Finance Laws

Carpenter¹,

Dunn²

2018

APSC

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Classroom simulations have become an increasingly popular instructional method in political science to increase student engagement, interest, and learning. This article describes a simulation designed to teach students about the complexities of campaignfinance systems, particularly disclosure requirements. In the simulation, students work in groups to convince others how to vote on a pending ballot measure. After spending more than $200 on materials, groups then must register as ballot-issue committees and comply with state campaign-finance laws, including tracking contributions and expenditures and completing all required forms. The simulation ends with a debrief. Results from several years of debriefs are presented to discuss how students perceive the complexities of campaign-finance laws. Dominant themes include surprise by students in the complexities of these laws and the effects they have on political speech and association.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Simulating Campaign Financementioning

confidence: 99%

Simulated Complexity: A New Classroom Simulation to Teach about Campaign-Finance Laws

Carpenter¹,

Dunn²

2018

APSC

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“…For non-voting members, we exclude editors in charge of comments and book reviews even if they are at or above the lowest voting member on the masthead.5 This measure has been validated and employed in prior research(Bonica, 2014;Thomsen, 2014;Chilton and Posner, 2015;Wood and Spencer, 2016). For example, Bonica (2017) validates CFscores against "policy preferences for a wide range of issues and successfully discriminate within party.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Discrimination in the Law Review Selection Process

2018

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The career trajectories of law professors and the dissemination of knowledge depend on the publication decisions of law review editors. However, these publication decisions are shrouded in mystery, and little is known about the factors that affect them. In this article, we investigate one potentially important factor: political ideology. To do so, we match data on the political ideology of student editors from 15 top law reviews over a twenty-year period to data on the political ideology of the authors of accepted articles. We find that editors accept articles in part because of shared political ideology with authors. That is, conservative editors are more likely to accept articles written by conservative authors, and liberal editors are more likely to accept articles written by liberal authors. We then investigate potential explanations for this ideological discrimination. One possibility is that student editors simply have a preference for publishing articles that promote their political ideology. Another possibility is that student editors are objectively better at assessing the contribution of articles written by authors with shared ideology. We find evidence that the ideological discrimination is driven by student editors' superior ability to ascertain the quality of articles that match their own ideology.

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“…Whether disclosure, on net, chills or thaws speech is an open, empirical question, and the Court's assumption has so far been tested only rarely. See, e.g.,Wood & Spencer 2016, La Raja 2014 In the language of Michael Gilbert, disclosure probably thaws some speech. Some thawing results from disclosure revealing cross pressures on the candidates and candidates' credibility in a given policy area(Gilbert 2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This happens more often than one might expect: in state-level races between 2000 and 2008, 17% of all contributions that candidates and campaigns reported were below the state's mandatory threshold. Giving below the threshold is not a safe harbor from being identified(Wood & Spencer 2016).27 Of course, there are corruption-based reasons for wanting to know the more fine-grained information of the employer, so that the public can hold elected officials accountable for working to benefit donors vs. nondonors.http://law.bepress.com/usclwps-lss/254…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Show Me the Money: 'Dark Money' and the Informational Benefit of Campaign Finance Disclosure

Wood

2017

SSRN Journal

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Campaign finance disclosure is under threat. While the Court continues to uphold mandatory disclosure, it has also eviscerated much of the legal justification for it. Simultaneously, gaps in the legal framework mean that some campaign activity is subject only to voluntary disclosure-consider "dark money" groups and unregulated Internet campaign advertising. In upholding the parts of the campaign finance regime that mandate disclosure, the Court has assumed that disclosure provides valuable policy information to voters, but it has not considered non-policy information that voters learn about candidates from the choice to disclose more than is legally required. This article provides new survey and experimental evidence that voters value disclosure of campaign finance information and will reward voluntary disclosure while punishing candidates supported by dark money groups. Voluntary disclosure signals transparency and thus trustworthiness. The importance of the second kind of information has not been previously recognized and suggests a role for voluntary as well as mandatory disclosure.

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In the Shadows of Sunlight: The Effects of Transparency on State Political Campaigns

Cited by 18 publications

References 32 publications

Simulated Complexity: A New Classroom Simulation to Teach about Campaign-Finance Laws

Simulated Complexity: A New Classroom Simulation to Teach about Campaign-Finance Laws

Political Discrimination in the Law Review Selection Process

Show Me the Money: 'Dark Money' and the Informational Benefit of Campaign Finance Disclosure

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