Abstract
For anyone who has ever wondered how parties in the U.S. Congress can operate apart from the executive, or anyone who thinks they know how private campaign funding influences congressional behaviour, this book is for you. Heberlig and Larson, a well-known duo who have published several articles on various aspects of this topic, have written an analysis that nicely connects many important facets of the congressional party and its electoral face. The book is well written, clearly explained and I agree with the authors when they say ‘… by incorporating new party fundraising developments into current theoretical perspectives on congressional parties, our book has built a long-overdue bridge between the literature on party campaigning and the literature on congressional party organizations’ (p. 247).
One of the central facets of the separation of powers and fixed elections in the US system is that the executive party has very little role in the electoral fortunes of its party in either house of Congress or even of its ‘favourite’ individual members. This has left the congressional parties to take care of their own partisan lives – in terms of legislation, elections and leadership. The electoral strategies of the congressional parties as a collective were of little importance when partisan control, especially in the House of Representatives, seemed to favour the Democrats. The Democrats were apt to think they would always be the majority party and the Republicans believed that majority status was so far beyond their reach that compromise was the only way they could exercise any relevance. However, after the 1994 congressional elections, when Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years, the question of majority status became a genuine one indeed, and changed the nature of congressional parties.
Chapter two is a comprehensive overview of the changing nature of congressional campaigning, the development of campaign finance practices for individual members of Congress and their supporters, and the relationship between members of Congress and the party organizations designed to support their election, the congressional campaign committees. Through the lens of party strategy, campaign finance and personal ambition, Heberlig and Larson tell the tale of how individual incumbents became interested in the electoral fortunes of their party as a whole instead of focusing exclusively on their own race. For those unfamiliar with the American system of legislative party behaviour, this chapter is a must-read. It is clear, concise and well referenced.
Next, Heberlig and Larson discuss the ‘institutional ambition’ facet of their argument. Generally, we think that legislators demonstrate their abilities through policymaking activities, and that those with the strongest abilities rise to positions of leadership in the congressional party or in the committee system. Since 1996, leadership aspirants must also demonstrate their allegiance to the party by raising money for securing the party’s majority status at the next election. The relationship studied is important for understanding how political party has any real meaning in the U.S. Congress – why does giving money to the party for elections matter in party leadership and how did it get that way? To answer this, Heberlig and Larson survey theories of congressional party leadership and choose to extend Cox and McCubbins’s argument about political party as cartel in the U.S. Congress to the common electoral interests of each individual partisan member. They do a fine job explaining how previous theories of congressional behaviour see the role of parties and then demonstrate why a cartel model – where party leaders control the agenda by determining who will occupy key decision posts – explains the current situation best.
Three empirical chapters follow to make their case. First, Heberlig and Larson show that members in party leadership positions, or who aspire to (and have a reasonable chance of obtaining) leadership positions, give significantly more campaign money to the electoral fortunes of others – through their personal campaign committees directly, to the congressional campaign committees and through leadership political action committees (PACs) – than rank-and-file members. Second, in analysing members’ donations to other candidates, they ask whether party-centric considerations or individual-centric considerations motivate member-giving to the party. They find that the party-centric effects overwhelm the individual ones. Third, Heberlig and Larson ask if members raise more money than they did before 1996 to fulfill these financial commitments. They find the answer is a definite yes, and that members are more dependent on business PACs and wealthy individual donors (who can contribute double what they were once able to since the 2002 campaign finance law) to provide the extra cash. They label this phenomenon ‘crowding’ to indicate that members still need money to campaign on, as well as to leverage leadership positions, with the result being that fundraising takes up more of the legislator’s time and attention. Surprising to the authors, members do not retire because of pressures over fundraising and the redistribution demands of the parties. It has become the new status quo.
This book is very well researched and documented. At the end of each empirical chapter the authors include a list of all the variables they used and how they were calculated. There are several appendices providing even more information about the data and methods. My sole critique of the book is that, save for the last few pages, the authors miss the opportunity to explore important questions about what their data tell us about democracy and elections more broadly. While they start to offer a list of potential reforms, I would say that my question is not about reforms of the current situation, rather an investigation into how the US came to adopt an entirely privately funded system of campaigns and why state funding has failed. The answer seems quite simple and broad: that the brand of liberal, capitalist democracy the US adopted leads to a market-based approach to governing and campaigning. Of course, this means simply that the book will stimulate much future research on these matters.