The Impact of Public Finance Laws on Fundraising in State Legislative Elections

Francia, Peter L.; Herrnson, Paul S.

doi:10.1177/1532673x03256784

Cited by 32 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Scholars of U.S. Congressional elections have examined from many angles how candidate quality affects the cost-benefit analysis that someone considering a candidacy will make, including the incumbency advantage, 164,165,166 party support of a candidacy, 167 and fundraising capacity. 168,169,170,171 This categorization of risk types is not, by any means, a comprehensive description of every potential risk consideration that an individual evaluates whether or not to seek political office. The crucial point is that electoral risk offers distinct risk-based considerations for someone considering running.…”

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confidence: 99%

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Sweet-Cushman

2016

Polit. life sci.

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ABSTRACT. In the United States, women have long held the right to vote and can participate fully in the political process, and yet they are underrepresented at all levels of elected office. Worldwide, men's dominance in the realm of politics has also been the norm. To date, scholars have focused on supply-side and demand-side explanations of women's underrepresentation but differences in how men and women assess electoral risk (the risk involved in seeking political office) are not fully explained. To fill this gap, I explore how evolutionary theory offers insights into gendered differences in political ambition and the evaluation of electoral risk. Using the framework of life-history theory, I hypothesize that both cognitive and environmental factors in human evolution, particularly as they relate to sexual selection and social roles, have shaped the psychology of ambition in gendered ways affecting contemporary politics. Cognitive risk-assessment mechanisms evolving in the hominid line came to be expressed differently in females and males, in women and men. These gendered expressions plausibly reflect differentiable environmental pressures in the past and may help explain behaviors in and barriers to women's electoral political activity in the present. If so, then the success of efforts to increase such activity -or, regressively, to suppress it -may be better understood.Key words: Political ambition, gender differences, evolutionary theory, electoral risk assessment M ale officeholders are the norm in political representation both worldwide and in the United States in particular. Across the globe, gender parity in political representation is unusual, and instances of women's overrepresentation are extremely rare. 1 In the United States, women make up slightly more than half of the population and earned the right to vote and participate fully in the political process many decades ago. Nevertheless, in recent U.S. history, less than a quarter of state legislators have been women; women have held few state executive offices; and women have comprised less than 20 percent of the membership of the U.S. Congress. 2 Proponents of greater gender equality in U.S. political representation continue to wonder why more women do not run for or hold political office when so many of the societal and structural barriers to their participation have diminished. The leading explanations tend to focus on candidate emergence and cultural doi: 10.1017/pls.2016.13Correspondence: Jennie Sweet-Cushman, Department of History, Political Science, and International Studies, Chatham University, 0 Woodland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Email: jsweetcushman@chatham.edu and psychological factors that contribute to men and women having different levels of political ambition. 3,4 However, these theories do not address what I consider to be critical questions: What role does electoral risk play in political ambition, and can evolutionary theory provide insight into gendered differences in risk assessment and political ambition? I argue that the ...

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confidence: 99%

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Sweet-Cushman

2016

Polit. life sci.

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“…However, there is one area where public funding has a material effect: it alters the relationship between candidates and voters. One effect is obvious: clean elections candidates spend very little time fundraising once they have qualified for public funds (Francia and Herrnson 2003), and more time on other forms of voter contact and public engagement (Miller 2011). …”

Section: Public Funding and Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We Would Like to Know

Mayer

2013

The Forum

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The implementation and expansion of public funding programs around the US over the past decade raised the possibility of major changes in the financing of campaigns at the state and local level. Advocates claimed that these programs increased electoral competition, reduced the influence of campaign contributors and lobbyists, and changed the distribution of political power. While there was evidence of a modest increase in competitiveness, primarily through reducing the number of incumbents who ran uncontested, the longer-term pattern has shown no significant change in incumbency reelection rates, margins of victory, or legislature demographics. Claims of major policy change have also been overstated. The Supreme Court's rejection of spending triggers for additional grant awards in Arizona Free Enterprise PAC v. Bennett makes full public funding programs less attractive, since publicly funded candidates are less able to keep pace with highspending opponents or independent expenditures. Future research should focus on how these programs affect the way that candidates and legislators engage with the public.

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“…But the reforms that hold the greatest promise for translating descriptive representation of the less advantaged into substantive representation might be “clean election” laws that provide public funding for candidates and thereby free them from dependence on affluent campaign donors and interest groups. A number of US states and cities have adopted such laws, and studies show that publicly funded elections do increase competition, even the fund raising and vote totals of incumbents and challengers, and reduce the amount of time candidates and office‐holders devote to raising money (Miller , Malhotra , Francia and Herrnson ). Whether they also shift policy in directions more favorable toward the less advantaged is still unclear (Miller ).…”

Section: Representational Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Descriptive Representation, Money, and Political Inequality in the United States

Gilens

2015

Swiss Political Sci Review

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The Impact of Public Finance Laws on Fundraising in State Legislative Elections

Cited by 32 publications

References 27 publications

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We Would Like to Know

Descriptive Representation, Money, and Political Inequality in the United States

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