This book studies the current paradox within the voting literature on campaign contributions and legislative voting behavior. Specifically, while journalists and observers believe that the contributions significantly influence congressional votes, empirical evidence compiled by political scientists has generally failed to identify a systematic linkage between the two. At the same time, the amount of money contributed by interest groups is increasing and polls indicate that the public is becoming more cynical about the process.

Campaign contributions are widely viewed as a corrupting influence but most scholarly research concludes that they have marginal impact on legislative behavior. Lynda W. Powell shows that contributions have considerable influence in some state legislatures but very little in others. Using a national survey of legislators, she develops an innovative measure of influence and delineates the factors that explain this great variation across the 99 U.S. state legislative chambers. Powell identifies the personal, institutional, and political factors that determine how much time a legislator devotes to personal fundraising and fundraising for the caucus. She shows that the extent of donors' legislative influence varies in ways corresponding to the same variations in the factors that determine fundraising time. She also confirms a link between fundraising and lobbying with evidence supporting the theory that contributors gain access to legislators based on donations, Powell's findings have important implications for the debate over the role of money in the legislative process.

This study assesses the influence of PACs by examining two pieces of legislation passed in 1982; a resolution vetoing the Federal Trade Commission's proposed used car rule and a bill which would have regulated professionals.

There have been many studies that have attempted to explain why members of Congress vote the way they do. Previous studies of legislative behavior have looked at both roll call votes and other measures of position taking and have found that this behavior can be explained by a combination of constituency, party, and interest group influence. The literature has not yet adequately addressed, however, whether members' roll call voting behavior is driven to a larger degree by campaign donations or by the member's electoral constituency. Members of Congress are beholden to both constituencies in some way, and because these two constituencies may at times place different demands on a legislator it is important to investigate which group has greater pull when the legislator is determining how to vote on a bill. Using new data that estimates the ideology of a member of Congress using the campaign finance donations a member receives during their election campaign, along with measures of the ideology of different electoral constituencies from the Campaign Congressional Election Study in the 111th and 112th Congresses, we find that roll call voting is most driven by party affiliation and the ideology of a member's contributors. These findings hold for a number of subgroups, including Democrats, Republicans, freshmen, and incumbents. We also explore the consequences this finding could have for representation in Congress.