Representation and reform: PACs, institutions, and the problem of collective action.

Abstract

This thesis evaluates political action committees (PACs) in the United States as a form of interest representation. PACs are organizations created by interest groups to raise and spend money for federal campaigns, and they have grown enormously since the campaign finance reforms of the 1970s. This study asks: What kinds of interest groups form PACs? What kinds do not? What accounts for differences in PAC formation and viability? And how do these differences affect policy representation and the political parties? I find that PACs are a small and biased system of interest representation. PACs under-represent two large and distinctive parts of the national interest group system--groups representing citizen interests and occupations in the nonprofit sector--while they over-represent business and labor. These biases are unique to PACs, as they are not found in the same degree among membership associations active in national policy processes, nor among other political tactics, such as legislative lobbying, administrative lobbying, or litigation. These biases are caused in part by a discrepancy between the organizational model enforced by the campaign finance, tax, and other laws governing interest group involvement in elections, and the actual ways in which many groups overcome problems of collective action. The laws were expected to create a more egalitarian system by ensuring that each group's electoral efforts were funded through voluntary contributions by private individuals in small amounts. Yet this "grass roots" model creates difficult problems of collective action, and it diverges sharply from the ways in which groups representing citizen and nonprofit interests are established and maintained, since such groups often rely on large contributions or subsidies from individual and institutional patrons. On the other hand, the rules give an advantage to groups, such as business and labor, with an institutional base that can be used to mobilize small contributors. These biases affect the policy positions and issues that PACs support, the party system, and the dynamic relations between parties and groups. My conclusions are based on comparisons between surveys of membership associations involved in national policy processes in 1980 and 1985, and all PACs registered in the 1980 and 1984 elections; and on analyses of which of the surveyed associations had, or did not have, affiliated PACs.