Doctoral Dissertation Research: Financing American Elections: Individual Contributors and the National Resource Constituency

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1031085 Jeff Manza Jennifer Heerwig New York University The relationship between social and political inequality is crucial to a functioning representative democracy. In the context of American politics, scholars have suggested that the most active citizens?active partisans?may differ in fundamental ways from those who participate in the political process less frequently. Given the recent and rapid increase in income inequality, these questions are becoming ever more pressing. This dissertation examines long-term trends in one important but under-studied type of political participation: individual contributions to political campaigns. Using an original dataset I will build from Federal Election Commission records, this study will document basic descriptive evidence about the individual donor pool (i.e. who contributes and in what amounts, with what frequency?). The research project will also be the first to systematically examine the small but important core of repeat donors, who represent an ever-growing share of contributions from individuals?the ?national resource constituency?. Following work on the impact of changing electoral coalitions on the party system, the project will also seek to uncover realignments in the social bases of support of the donor pool Broader Impacts. The findings of this study will provide crucial, policy relevant knowledge about the likely effects of deepening economic inequalities on the representation of the American public. A further contribution of this project will be to create and disseminate a unique, previously unavailable dataset of individual contributors to federal campaigns from 1980 to present. Since the Federal Election Commission?s data, available on its website, itemizes individual contributions rather than individual contributors, past scholarly efforts have been unable to accurately track donors over time or, likewise, the concentration of the donor base. This project will be the first to do so and will, upon completion, provide a valuable catalog of elite political participation to the broader community.