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Full-Text Articles in Political Theory
Reclaiming Egalitarianism In The Political Theory Of Campaign Finance Reform, Frank Pasquale
Reclaiming Egalitarianism In The Political Theory Of Campaign Finance Reform, Frank Pasquale
Frank A. Pasquale
Recent advocacy for campaign finance reform has been based on an ideal of the democratic process which is unrealistic and unhelpful. Scholars should instead return to its egalitarian roots. This article examines how deliberative democratic theory became the main justification for campaign finance reform. It exposes the shortcomings of this deliberativist detour and instead models campaign spending as an effort to commodify issue-salience. Given this dominant function of money in politics, a more effective paradigm for reform is equalizing influence. Advocates of campaign regulation should return to the original principles of reformers; not an idealized vision of the democratic process, …
Interest Group Scorecards And Legislative Satisfaction: Using Ratings To Explore The Private Bias In Public Policy, Daniel E. Chand
Interest Group Scorecards And Legislative Satisfaction: Using Ratings To Explore The Private Bias In Public Policy, Daniel E. Chand
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Despite their importance to our system, the study of interest groups has produced few concrete findings compared to other actors such as administrative agencies and political parties in the policymaking process. The absence of generalizable findings is partly explained by the unpopularity of the topic, but is primarily due to a deficiency of easily accessible data and lack of agreement over how to operationalize important concepts. In the following dissertation, I employ interest group "scorecards" (ratings of members of Congress) as an approach to examining interest groups in a generalizable manner. Specifically, I use scorecards to test the pluralist assumptions …