Interest Groups and Campaign Finance Reform in the United States and Canada

277 Pages·2011·1.38 MB·English

by  Robert G. Boatright

Interest Groups and
Campaign Finance Reform in the
United States and Canada

Interest Groups and
Campaign Finance Reform in the
United States and Canada
Robert G. Boatright
the university of michigan press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University ofMichigan 2011
All rights reserved
Published in the United States ofAmerica by
The University ofMichigan Press
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica
cPrinted on acid-free paper
2014 2013 2012 2011 4 3 2 1
No part ofthis publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form
or by any means,electronic,mechanical,or otherwise,
without the written permission ofthe publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boatright,Robert G.
Interest groups and campaign finance reform in the United States
and Canada / Robert G.Boatright.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn978-0-472-07144-9 (cloth :alk.paper) —
isbn978-0-472-05144-1 (pbk.:alk.paper) —
isbn978-0-472-02675-3 (e-book)
1.Campaign funds—United States. 2.Campaign funds—Canada.
3.Pressure groups—United States. 4.Pressure groups—Canada.
I.Title.
jk1991.b59 2011
324.7'80973—dc22 2010043191
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Author’s Note xi
List ofAcronyms xiii
Introduction:Interest Groups and Campaign
Finance Reform—A Natural Experiment 1
Part I | The Roots ofReform
1 | Interest Group Studies in Canada and the United States 25
2 | Interest Group Politics ofthe 1990s and the Campaign
Finance Reform Movement 53
3 | Campaign Finance Reform 71
Part II | Consequences ofReform
4 | Measuring the Effects ofReform 85
5 | The American Response 102
6 | The Canadian Response 149
7 | Lessons 174
8 | Reform Goals and Values 193
Appendix:A Primer on Brokerage Parties 213
Notes 217
List ofInterviews 225
Bibliography 227
Index 243

Acknowledgments
This project has a long and complicated history.From 2002 through 2004,
I was part of a research team at the Campaign Finance Institute that was
exploring the effect of campaign ‹nance reform on organized interests.I
had the privilege of being in Washington, within a few blocks of all of
these groups’headquarters,as they were planning their strategies for the
2002 and 2004 elections.As part of the Institute’s research team,I spoke
with the leaders of almost all of the major American organized interest
groups. I and my co-investigators on this project (Institute director
Michael Malbin,Mark Rozell,and Clyde Wilcox) contributed two chap-
ters to books on campaign ‹nance reform.As part of a completely sepa-
rate Campaign Finance Institute project,however,I took an interest in the
Canadian political contribution tax credit.My correspondence about the
credit with Lisa Young led to an invitation to a conference on Canadian
party ‹nance reform held at the University ofCalgary in 2006;there,sev-
eral Canadian political scientists encouraged me to apply for a research
grant to do the same sort of interview-based work on Canadian groups.
My work in Canada convinced me that the only way to make sense ofthe
pile of material on American groups I had accumulated was to use it not
simply to look at American campaign ‹nance law but to look at the in-
centives for and constraints on American interest groups in a comparative
context.
At the Campaign Finance Institute,I am deeply indebted to Michael
Malbin for his mentorship regarding my thinking about interest groups,
his patience in reading through so much ofthe material here,his ability to
get in touch with virtually anyone that matters in Washington, and the
support he has provided.Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox were also instru-
mental in helping me to think about the role of interest groups in con-
temporary American politics and in lining up interviews with the various
groups.Steve Weissman shared with me his extensive knowledge ofmany
viii | Acknowledgments
of the ‹ner points of federal law governing advocacy groups and cam-
paign ‹nance. And although he left the Institute before I arrived there,
Richard Skinner’s earlier work on the interest groups project was invalu-
able in helping me ‹gure out what to ask the groups.Although this proj-
ect has evolved substantially since my departure,the component ofit con-
cerning American groups would have been impossible without ‹nancial
support and intellectual guidance from the Institute.
On the Canadian side,my travel to Ottawa,Toronto,and Halifax was
covered by a research grant from Foreign Affairs Canada.Marc Jacques of
the Canadian consulate in Boston helped me to formulate the proposal
and to get the Canadian side ofthe project started.Throughout my work
on this project,Lisa Young answered all of my questions about Canadian
politics,from the most basic to the extraordinarily complicated; Harold
Jansen, William Cross, and Jonathan Malloy also provided important
feedback on the project, helping me to identify groups with which to
speak,to make sense of Canadian election data,and,most important,to
enjoy my travel in Canada.
I owe a substantial debt as well to all ofthe group leaders who agreed to
sit down for interviews with me.Many ofthe American group leaders sub-
mitted to not just one but two or three interviews.Although each of the
Canadian group leaders spoke with me in person only once,many ofthem
educated me about relatively basic features of Canadian politics, ‹elded
follow-up questions,and read drafts ofmy summaries ofour interviews.
Chapter 5 is a revised version ofmaterial that I originally wrote for an
article published in the Canadian Journal ofPolitical Sciencein 2009.Por-
tions ofchapters 3 and 4 appear in Election and Party Finance in Canada:
Consequences for Democracy, edited by Lisa Young and Harold Jansen. I
gratefully acknowledge the permission given by Cambridge Journals and
the University ofBritish Columbia Press to reprint this material here.
I have had the good fortune to receive unusually helpful comments on
this material from colleagues and at conferences.Neil Burnham,William
Crotty, Michael Heaney, James McHugh, Steve Schier, and Tim Werner
provided feedback.My colleagues in the government department at Clark
University have also been a valuable resource. Paul Posner and Valerie
Sperling ‹elded my questions about the comparative politics literature,
Mark Miller helped with questions on the courts,and department chairs
Beverly Grier,Sharon Krefetz,and Mark Miller helped ensure that I had
the funding and research support needed to keep this project a›oat.I am
also thankful to JeffBiggs and the American Political Science Association
Congressional Fellowship Program for enabling me to travel to Ottawa as