| What explains the dramatic rise in interest group electioneering in the mid-1990s? Why did interest groups contribute millions in unlimited soft money to political parties, fund thousands of "issue advocacy" advertisements, and sponsor hundreds of organizations outside the reach of the Federal Election Commission? This is puzzling in that Congress passed no new laws to permit such activity, and much of this activity was arguably legal in the 1970s. The central argument of my dissertation is that to understand how interest groups engage elections in these varying ways, and to understand how this has changed over time, we must comprehend how changing political and legal contexts create both opportunities and impediments for certain forms of electoral participation.; First, I argue that the balanced and polarized party politics of the late 1990s---begun with the Republican gains in 1994 and continued with struggles for majority status in the elections that followed---was a crucial motivating factor compelling many interest groups to mobilize aggressively in alliance with party agendas. Second, I argue the FEC---stewards of federal election law---weakened their expansive take on the limits of interest group electioneering, thereby reducing the costs to the adoption of new tactics. All told, I show that the political demand for funds coming from this extremely partisan and polarized political context combined with increased regulatory openness to create a "perfect storm" necessary to allow this expansion in interest group electioneering. I leverage a wide source of data to advance important debates about the power of interest groups in American politics and the relationship between interest groups and political parties. |
