There has long been concern about the role of interest groups in the policymaking process, especially the effect of group money in legislative elections/decision making and informal relationships between lobbyists and legislators. The result has been more than four decades of reform in California, beginning with the legislative ethics code in 1966. The current reform regime does almost all it can to regulate behavior through disclosure rules and limits on gifts and contributions. Interest groups play an important role in policymaking and increased constraints on their activities may be counterproductive. Future reforms should not focus on controlling legislator/lobbyist interactions, but empower the public to become more involved in the policy process as a counterweight to interest group pressure. We propose ways to improve the usability of available government information to make the public more active in policymaking and elections. Accountability and quality of policy will improve as both interest groups and interested citizens influence legislative decisions.
There is an expectation among practitioners that advertising disclosures work to inform voters about who is speaking and whether they should trust the information in the advertisement. However, existing research suggests that current disclosure regulations may not perform as reformers expect. These studies indicate that voters may be deceived by strategically chosen interest group names that falsely project knowledge or trustworthiness. In this study, I measure how actual campaign names and interest groups are perceived by individuals in terms of their knowledge and trustworthiness. I then experimentally vary the campaign finance disclosure within a ballot initiative advertisement to see how these disclosures affect respondents’ issue preferences. This study found that in some cases, there was no difference between an advertisement with no disclosure and one with a veiled disclosure message. In other cases, this level of disclosure reduced support for the issue. In most cases, respondents appear to condition their support on the credibility of the campaign donor disclosed. In some cases, respondents are deceived by the perceived credibility of campaign names when less comprehensive disclosure is used.
There has long been concern about the role of interest groups in the policymaking process, especially the effect of group money in legislative elections/decision making and informal relationships between lobbyists and legislators. The result has been more than four decades of reform in California, beginning with the legislative ethics code in 1966. The current reform regime does almost all it can to regulate behavior through disclosure rules and limits on gifts and contributions. Interest groups play an important role in policymaking and increased constraints on their activities may be counterproductive. Future reforms should not focus on controlling legislator/lobbyist interactions, but empower the public to become more involved in the policy process as a counterweight to interest group pressure. We propose ways to improve the usability of available government information to make the public more active in policymaking and elections. Accountability and quality of policy will improve as both interest groups and interested citizens influence legislative decisions.
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