The Power of Businesses Financing Politics

Introduction

The super PAC is a new and very significant campaign actor. This is the first election since 1972 that looks like 1972 in terms of private large donations being given to candidate surrogates, says Briffault. This election closes out 40 years of campaign finance reform. Although super PACs have been around since 2010, Briffault observes in the article that they have evolved over two years from primarily ideological or partisan vehicles to committees focused on advancing or opposing the fortunes of specific candidates. According to media reports, super PACs accounted for about two-thirds of the approximately $12.5 million spent by Republican presidential candidates in the Iowa caucuses (Boatright, 113). Super PACs were an important part of the spending that aided top-tier candidates Romney and Ron Paul. Millions of those dollars were spent on attack ads, which candidates are often loath to run themselves because of the potential for voter backlash.

Discussion

The Super PAC is the unholy spawn of a pair of high-level 2010 court cases that don't even have the excuse of being drunk at the time of conception. In January of that year, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee and decided that the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring political broadcasts funded by corporations or unions. On March 26, 2010, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, that global corporations and, for instance, lobbyists representing foreign powers are free to contribute unlimited sums of money to advocacy groups. The rulings perversely defined corporations as people, albeit people with far greater resources and reach than anyone a typical person will ever meet. If the ruling party has a significant advantage over bureaucratic opposition parties and has access to material resources and finances, we cannot doubt of violating the principle of equal opportunities policy. Similarly, if the political success has been achieved mainly due to financial excellence, the principle can also be compromised. Funds received from grants political parties can influence and even control the flow of information that can be a determining factor in the case of well-informed choices (Malbin, 67). Herbert E. Alexander, in his article, "Money and Politics: Rethinking the conceptual structures" notes that "the distinguishing characteristic of money is that they can be transferred and converted is not necessarily revealing the source. Convertibility of money is a major advantage in politics". Through this and similar reasons in a number of countries introduced public financing of election campaigns. Justification for such financing is that it leads to greater competition, as it allows candidates or parties who do not have money to participate in national elections on an equal footing with all other participants. Equal opportunity to participate in the elections could be achieved if this mechanism is used for state funding, includes safeguards against abuse of power by the ruling party or individual.

Only half of the countries studied direct funding of parties or candidates in the election campaign. These countries are: Australia, ...