Prithviraj Datta - Why Campaign Finance Matters: On the Normative Significance of Electoral Spending
Prithviraj Datta, Postdoctoral Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University
Political theorists have, for the most part, devoted little sustained attention to the normative significance of campaign finance. This omission is particularly troubling in light of the fact that the United States Supreme Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence, which frames and informs the public debate over the value of electoral spending in this country, suffers from serious empirical infirmities. This paper represents one attempt to remedy the lacuna in the theoretical literature. Relying on recent scholarship in political science, I argue here that campaign finance matters because it plays a role in determining who gets to run for higher office, and how effectively they are able to do so. The manner in which campaigns are funded in the United States, I further note, detrimentally impacts the competitiveness of elections in the nation. I conclude the paper by offering a few thoughts about the regulatory implications of this account.
Prithviraj Datta is a postdoctoral fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University. His research and teaching interests lie primarily at the intersection of contemporary political theory, public law, and American politics, with specific interests in democratic theory, constitutional law, and American social and political thought. He received a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2014. He also holds law degrees from the University of Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes scholar, and the National Law School of India.