The role of political parties in the United States in raising and spending money for federal elections underwent a fundamental change in recent years, as national party committees raised and redistributed rapidly increasing amounts of both hard and soft money. This role promises to change again, now that the Supreme Court has upheld the most important challenged provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. However, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the sources, uses and effects of campaign money raised and redistributed by national party committees during the years immediately before, as well as after, these reforms. The PI will analyze these issues using data for the 1994-2004 election cycles. The specific objectives for this proposal are: (1) Identify the factors specific to congressional districts that influence the amount of hard money raised by national party committees during the 1994-2002 elections cycles; (2) Identify the determinants and effects of party support for congressional candidates; (3) Identify factors that have influenced the reallocation of hard and soft money by national party committees to state and local party committees; (4) Identify the key consequences of net transfers of funds to state and local party committees; (5) Conduct comparable analyses of data for the 2004 election cycle as they become available.
The research described in this project will constitute the first comprehensive analysis of the sources, redistribution and consequences of campaign money raised and redistributed by national party committees before and after the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. At the completion of this project, we will have a better understanding of how the particular objectives of national party committees and their ability to raise funds and redistribute them nationwide affect the competitiveness of both federal and nonfederal elections, as well as the ability of states to maintain autonomy for state and local elections in a federal system. Insights provided from these analyses will allow a more precise evaluation of campaign finance regulations that affect the extent to which money is channeled through national party committees rather than other intermediaries, and will provide a basis for assessing future proposed changes to campaign finance regulations.
The successful completion of this proposal can be expected to generate significant benefits to society by providing a comprehensive study of a timely and important issue in American politics, namely the role of the national political party committees in campaign finance and elections. In order to facilitate broad dissemination of the results that will accrue from this research, the PI will write a book-length manuscript that will be accessible to both academic and non-academic audiences. In addition, data on national party committee fundraising, spending, and transfers to state and local committees will be made available to other scholars through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. Finally, the results from this proposal will broaden the participation of underrepresented groups by funding faculty at a non-Ph.D.-granting department of political science.
