Campaign Finance and American Democracy

"The book includes not only specific data (and lots of it), but detailed statistical analyses of prior studies and surveys. Even better, it looks at Americans’ knowledge about and faith in the states’ campaign finance laws, not just the federal system. If you work in this area, you should read this book and keep it by your side while drafting your papers or reading others’ work." * Institute for Free Speech *

"In their book, the first after the Citizens United decision that contrasts public opinion and the scientific consensus on the role of money in American politics, Primo and Milyo set out to uncover what the public thinks about money in politics, what drives the perceptions, and why it matters."

-- Futurity
“The American public actually knows very little about the federal campaign finance system in the United States—and much of what they think they know is incorrect. Campaign Finance and American Democracy debunks much of the conventional wisdom to shed new light on a topic that has been debated for decades.” -- Candice Nelson, American University
“Since at least the 1970s and Buckley v. Valeo, the premise of American campaign finance law has been to prevent corruption and even the appearance of corruption. The debate over Citizens United has brought this question into sharp focus, but the disagreements have nonetheless accepted the core premise of ‘appearance’ as factual. But what if the entire logic of the approach has been based on a false premise? Primo and Milyo examine the empirical public-opinion foundations of campaign finance, and the answers are surprising and important. This book contains the most important and, in some ways, the most surprising information about political perceptions in the past decade.” -- Michael C. Munger, Duke University
“A timely and fresh look at the intersection of public opinion and campaign finance reform. Primo and Milyo skillfully bring a social choice perspective to bear in challenging the widely held assumptions that money erodes public trust in government and that campaign finance reform will help restore that trust. Through their theoretical arguments and their careful empirical analysis of survey data from mass and elite samples, they marshal an effective case against what they term a ‘romantic’ view of democracy. In so doing, they provide a welcome corrective to the study of campaign finance reform.” -- Thomas Rudolph, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Money has always had a freighted and confusing place in our politics. Primo and Milyo show that what the public wants above all is trust, not simply reform. They show us how attempts at reform have sometimes succeeded but more often failed to build public confidence in our electoral institutions. Most importantly, they offer us a new and constructive way to engage questions about the role of money in American elections.” -- Stephen Ansolabehere, Harvard University