Campaign Finance Laws and Political Efficacy: Evidence from the States

23 DO CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATIONS affect how citizens view their government? This question is both theoretically important and policy-relevant. A central argument for more restrictive campaign finance laws at both the state and federal levels is that tighter rules will restore trust in the government and make citizens once again feel that they can affect the political process. Supreme Court decisions upholding the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations acknowledge that the maintenance of confidence in government can sometimes override free-speech concerns. Yet the purported link between campaign finance law and perceptions of government has never been established systematically. In fact, there is good reason to doubt the existence of such a link, as both Primo (2002) and Coleman and Manna (2000) argue that there is little or no relationship between total campaign spending in federal elections and average trust in government at the national level. In fact, Freedman, Franz, and Goldstein (2004) find that campaign advertising (and, therefore, campaign spending) increases interest levels, knowledge, and turnout, suggesting that spending may in fact be a net positive for democracy.2 Given the central role that trust and efficacy play in scholarly and policy discussions about campaign finance reform, it is surprising that no study has directly examined the connection between existing campaign finance laws and how citizens view their government.3 Nevertheless, institutional reforms are widely thought to be a potential policy lever for strengthening democracy. For example, Hibbing and Theiss-