News Release

September 4, 2003

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Campaign spending: It's good for democracy
The outlays help the public learn more about candidates and issues

WASHINGTON -- As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a belief that campaign spending is bad for the electoral process and detrimental to democracy seems widely held. However, according to a Cato Institute Briefing Paper released today, the opposite is true.

In "The Benefits of Campaign Spending," author John J. Coleman, associate chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, argues that democracy prospers as more money is spent in political campaigns. According to several studies he has conducted over the last decade, increases in campaign spending do not reduce public trust in government; instead, the stepped-up outlays increase the public's political knowledge.

Further, by merging public opinion data from the University of Michigan's National Election Studies with campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission, Coleman finds that in 18 out of 20 measures, increased spending led to increased understanding in the electorate.

He finds that respondents' trust in the government was unaffected by the amount of campaign money spent in their district. Additionally, people were equally likely to indicate that they had a say in government affairs regardless of the campaign spending amounts.

He also debunks skeptics' arguments that campaign spending disproportionately enlightens those who are already knowledgeable about or active in politics. His research shows that as more money is spent, the political knowledge gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged closes. "Campaign spending," he writes, "rather than strengthening and entrenching political inequality, is a democratizing force."

Coleman asserts that increased spending by challengers can help them overcome the advantages that incumbents have in elections, including name recognition and experience. With limits imposed on spending, even unpopular incumbents have automatic advantages over challengers. However, if challengers can spend freely, they are more likely to remove a weak incumbent from office.

"The findings of those studies show that campaign spending enhances the quality of democracy and leads to a vibrant political community," says Coleman. "Getting more money into campaigns should, on the whole, be beneficial, and there is a range of methods -- which would appeal differently to people of different ideological persuasions -- by which those additional resources could enter the campaign finance system."

Briefing Paper no. 84