To prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption? Using public choice to understand and improve U.S. political campaign finance regulation

Since the first years of the American Republic, there have been several attempts to regulate the role of money in politics, particularly establishing different set of rules for political campaign finance. Yet more interesting seems the evolution of the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court in this matter. However, from the legal scholarship perspective, the story of political campaign finance regulation is the story of a regulation that seeks to promote the public interest: rules enacted to prevent corruption or its appearance, or the achievement of political equality. This dissertation will propose an alternative version of the existence and evolution of this regulation. In effect, when rules like spending and contribution limits or the existence of public funding are viewed under the public choice lens, it is possible to understand why incumbents, in an effort to try to preserve their positions in the market and prevent challengers to enter the political market, are so interested in establishing complex and rigid rules of campaign finance. More important, this rationale is not only useful when the political process is analyzed through the positive lens (describing how things are), but also from a normative perspective (how things could or should be) especially for the Court's judicial review of this legislation. This is particularly important these days when the Court and legal scholarship are looking for a coherent rationale to approach this area of regulation and also to explain the Robert's Court deregulatory approach to campaign finance regulation since 2006.