| Today many Americans believe that once a person is elected to Congress, he or she becomes a pawn of the corporations that financially supported them in their last election bid, in other words, their roll-call votes are compromised. This cynical belief is often perpetuated by media with nothing more credible offered as proof than the occasional anecdotal piece of evidence.;In search of proof that industry-connected PACs do indeed influence congressional roll-call votes at the federal level, this thesis looks at the United States Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Two hundred seventy-six PACs connected to the industries that would be affected negatively by the passage of additional restrictive air pollution abatement policies were selected for study. Data on five relevant control variables were also collected and all six independent variables were subjected to the same regression and correlation procedures. All data were gathered from primary sources: U.S. government publications and government agencies.;The results of this study indicate one cannot reject the null hypothesis. The findings of this thesis indicate that PAC expenditures only minimally influenced the congressional roll-call votes of the United States Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Nowhere could the PAC variable explain more than 17 percent of the variability on any one bill. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
