Money in Exile: Campaign Contributions and Committee Access

Abstract

Corporations and political action committees (PACs) flood congressional elections with money. Understanding why they contribute is essential for determining how money influences policy in Congress. To test theories of contributors' motivations we exploit committee exile-the involuntary removal of committee members after a party loses a sizable number of seats, and the losses are unevenly distributed across committees. We use exile to show that business interests seek short-term access to influential legislators. Sectors regulated by the committee decrease contributions after a legislator is exiled, instead PACs from regulated sectors direct their contributions to new committee members from the opposite party. Partisan interests, in contrast, attempt to influence electoral outcomes-boosting contributions to exiled members. Together, we provide evidence that corporations and business PACs use donations to acquire immediate access and favor-suggesting they at least anticipate that the donations will influence policy. * We thank Gary Jacobson for sharing his candidate quality data, Arjun Wilkins for sharing his election data, Adam Bonica for his campaign finance data, and the Center for Responsive Politics for its industry and committee oversight classifications. We thank

Donations to Political Parties: Investing Corporations and Consuming Individuals?

“…First, there is evidence for the U.S. that political donors as investors prefer to donate to influential incumbents (Snyder 1992;Barber 2016;Grier and Munger 1991;Romer and Snyder 1994;Powell and Grimmer 2015) and to members of the majority party (Cox and Magar 1999;Rudolph 1999) as these candidates are in a better position to grant investors access to the political arena. Similarly, governing parties in Germany may be in a better position to give investing donors access to the political sphere and to influence legislative outcomes in their favor.…”

When Are Agenda Setters Valuable?

“…At the federal level, scholars have studied how institutional assets such as committee assignments, majority-party status, and leadership positions affect the allocation of campaign contributions (Ansolabehere and Snyder 1999;Ban, Moskowitz, and Snyder 2016;Berry and Fowler 2016;Cox and Magar 1999;Powell and Grimmer 2016); however, limited turnover among legislative leaders at the federal level makes it difficult, if not impossible, to test nuanced claims concerning agenda setting and the allocation of campaign contributions. At the federal level, scholars have studied how institutional assets such as committee assignments, majority-party status, and leadership positions affect the allocation of campaign contributions (Ansolabehere and Snyder 1999;Ban, Moskowitz, and Snyder 2016;Berry and Fowler 2016;Cox and Magar 1999;Powell and Grimmer 2016); however, limited turnover among legislative leaders at the federal level makes it difficult, if not impossible, to test nuanced claims concerning agenda setting and the allocation of campaign contributions.…”

“…Our understanding of the way in which agendasetting powers affect the allocation of campaign contributions is relatively limited. At the federal level, scholars have studied how institutional assets such as committee assignments, majority-party status, and leadership positions affect the allocation of campaign contributions (Ansolabehere and Snyder 1999;Ban, Moskowitz, and Snyder 2016;Berry and Fowler 2016;Cox and Magar 1999;Powell and Grimmer 2016); however, limited turnover among legislative leaders at the federal level makes it difficult, if not impossible, to test nuanced claims concerning agenda setting and the allocation of campaign contributions. At the state level, scholars have explored the institutional rules and procedures affecting legislative committees and leaders (Aldrich and Battista 2002;Clark 2012;Clucas 2001;Hamm, Hedlund, and Martorano 2006;Hedlund et al 2009;Hedlund and Hamm 1996), and in a separate line of literature, scholars have studied the role of money in state legislative elections (Barber 2016;Fouirnaies and Hall 2014); however, data limitations have prevented comprehensive studies of agenda control and the allocation of campaign finance to individual state legislators.…”

Political or Financial Benefits? Ideology, Tenure, and Parliamentarians’ Choice of Interest Group Ties

“…In return, MPs become interest groups' advocates in parliament (Gava et al 2016;Niessen and Ruenzi 2010) which often has a direct impact on their behaviour in parliament (Arnold et al 2014;Gagliarducci et al 2010;Staat and Kuehnhanss 2016). Yet, although there are clearly good reasons for representatives to pursue both political and financial goals, existing studies have so far primarily looked at this relationship through the lens of access-seeking IGs and attributed the agency accordingly (Fouirnaies 2018;Fouirnaies andHall 2014, 2018;Neff Powell and Grimmer 2016). This leaves a research gap when it comes to understanding the parliamentarian-side of the IG-MP collaboration equation.…”