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Myth Of The Level Playing Field: Knowledge, Affect, And Repetition In Public Debate, The, Jeremy N. Sheff

Missouri Law Review

The industrialization of the channels and scale of communication has led some well-meaning reformers to try to regulate the ability of powerful private actors to leverage economic inequality into political inequality, particularly in the area of campaign finance. Such reform efforts are ostensibly intended to further the deliberative democratic ideal of rational, informed public decisionmaking by preventing well-funded private interests from improperly influencing democratic debate and, by extension, political outcomes. This Article examines empiricalfindings in political science, psychology, and marketing and argues that, in the context of contemporary American society, the normative principles of deliberative democracy and formal equality operate …