Even the scummiest and most interested of companies don’t buy political favors. And how voters are personally doing is much less correlated with their vote than how they think the country is doing. I don’t have links, but it was also reported in “Freakonomics” that campaign expenditures have little to do with the success of a candidate (as evidenced by self-funded wealthy candidates). John Lott reported in “Freedomnomics” that whether a legislator is retiring and needs to raise campaign funds has no detectable effect on how he actually votes. I forget though if he examined the possible influence of angling for a post-electoral career the lobbying interest groups.
You can find lots of graphs showing political contributions by corporations at Ideological Cartography. You can look up individual donations by employer at opensecrets.org
UPDATE: More from the monkey cage. Public concerns about the economy leads that of influential newspapers. Count this as a point against Mencius Moldbug and Mark Kleiman on the power of the fourth estate?
UPDATE 2: Income inequality does not seem to have much effect on perceptions of the economy either.
September 5, 2010 at 8:22 pm
That would resolve one political puzzle. If donating millions of dollars really gets you billions in benefits; than why is purchasing political points so cheap? Why don’t more people do it? That makes more sense if the role of money in politics is overrated.
September 6, 2010 at 12:30 am
“And how voters are personally doing is much less correlated with their vote than how they think the country is doing.”
doesn’t this go against the “most people don’t have ideology” bit?
September 6, 2010 at 4:23 am
“Even the scummiest and most interested of companies don’t buy political favors.”
I’m just boggling at this statement. Does bribery so as to get a government contract count?
September 6, 2010 at 10:56 am
That article didn’t really support its own thesis very well — the count of emails is not really a good measure of their importance, certainly most of my email is about unimportant stuff, but the few that are important are very important.
But then you take their poorly supported conclusion and overgeneralize it to a grand principle. Come on. I would think an economy-minded person like you would take a look at the amount of money that corporations spend on lobbying, which is $3.5 billion a year according to opensecrets. Presumably they aren’t spending that money for no reason whatsoever.
September 6, 2010 at 2:10 pm
doesn’t this go against the “most people don’t have ideology” bit?
Voting based on whether the country is doing well economically etc. doesn’t really amount to having an ideology. Animals seek comfort and avoid pain too.
September 7, 2010 at 4:54 pm
“An honest politician is one who stays bought.”
As for the country, what can we do with people who believe in the Mandate of Heaven?
September 7, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Thorfinn, I have heard that it was much more expensive to bribe even low-level officials in Russia than James Murtha or that guy from Louisiana with cash in his fridge. Not sure why that is.
nazgulnarsil, I don’t understand how that cuts against it. And I would also add that lack of an ideology does not mean lack of partisan leanings.
mtraven, good point about a small number of emails being very important. I guess we’d have to read the actual emails. And a radical could argue that Enron didn’t care who got elected since the game is rigged in advance. As for the amount of money spent on corporations, how does that compare to the amount of money available to corporations and the amount of rents available to seek? Last I heard America spent more money advertising toothpaste than on political campaigns.
melendwyr, I don’t get the connection.
September 9, 2010 at 10:06 am
> Not sure why that is.
Supply and demand, I’d bet. I’m sure the demand for bribe offers is higher in Russia than it is here, but maybe the supply is way waaaay higher then it is here.
September 9, 2010 at 10:12 am
Political favor, once the demand covers just about all of the supply at an acceptable price, is like a fixed quantity good, like gold. If the gold market were illegal (and some people had it naturally but weren’t allowed to sell it), then using this black market might get you in jail, so bidders would be accordingly fewer and prices lower than they would be on a white market.
Since bribery is basically as tolerated in Russia as weed is in America, it’s basically a white market in bribery.
September 9, 2010 at 3:28 pm
It seems to me there is a corollary here to the popular misstatement of Say’s law, “supply creates its own demand.”
The larger government is, the greater its scope and capacity to influence various kinds of economic activities, the greater will be the ability of those in charge to sell favors and create rent-seeking opportunities for those who suborn them. No one would bother to bribe a government official who did not have the authority to help him, or stifle his competitors.
The popular conception of political corruption is that innocent politicians and bureaucrats are led down the primrose path by nasty, corrupt, self-serving businessmen. Why is the converse, in which the politicians and bureaucrats convey, with subtlety or blatancy as the case may warrant, that one must ‘pay to play,’ and the only losers will be those naive enough not to pay?
To suggest otherwise is the equivalent of supposing that the whores in a brothel are pure as the driven snow, and only have been seduced into a life of vice by the dirty old men that are their customers.
Finally, lobbying, however expensive it may be is not the same as bribery. We know from their own testimony that legislators don’t read the bills they vote on – they let various interest groups do that, who then communicate or register complaints through their lobbyists. In practice, lobbyists are the medium through which congressmen learn what is in the bills drafted by their staffers. They would never find out on their own. Admittedly, this is not how the Constitution says the system is supposed to work, but it’s how it does.
September 9, 2010 at 11:36 pm
A. Paleocon, a higher supply is normally supposed to lead to a lower price. And black markets mean restricted supplies and higher prices.
September 17, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Zaller’s book on public opinion was somewhat influential on those who study it, and it backs up Mencius’ claim (though I don’t the details of his claim). The public gets its cue from elite opinion. OTOH I don’t recall if he studied opinion on the economy. I know he covered perceptions of the Vietnam war, but that wouldn’t be something the American citizenry can get feedback from in their day-to-day affairs, unlike the economy.
But then how to square what I just said with the mismatch between personal circumstances and the national economy. Hm, definitely a media effect, but not that of journalism? Weird.
September 4, 2011 at 11:14 am
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