Handwringing over the perceived influence of campaign money is one of the great pastimes of American politics. The conventional wisdom among many observers is that the flow of money into election campaigns produces policy incongruence, unfair incumbency advantage, and widespread dissatisfaction with the political system among members of the public. Despite decades of accelerating concern about campaign finance, however, good empirical tests of this conventional wisdom have been surprisingly rare.

David M. Primo and Jeffrey D. Milyo’s Campaign Finance and American Democracy relies on a vast and novel array of data to offer a compellingly contrarian view to the dominant narrative of campaign finance. Primo and Milyo use extensive survey data to examine the public’s cynicism, corruption perceptions, trust in government, and knowledge of campaign finance laws and their effects. The authors conduct a similar survey of campaign finance scholars. The result is one of the most comprehensive examinations of opinion and issue framing to date. Indeed, the primary strength of this work is bringing together the issue’s rhetorical frames and campaign finance law esoterica with a theory that rejects normative views about money in politics.

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