The passage of Citizens United by the Supreme Court in 2010 sparked a renewed debate about campaign spending by large political action committees, or Super PACs. Its ruling said that it is okay for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want in advertising and other methods to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. This book provides a wide range of opinions on the issue. Includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.

Political Action Committees (PACs) are a prominent and contentious feature of modern American election campaigns. As organizations that channel money toward political candidates and causes, their influence in recent decades has been widely noted and often decried. Yet, there has been no comprehensive history compiled of their origins, development, and impact over time. In The Rise of Political Action Committees, Emily J. Charnock addresses this gap, telling a story with much deeper roots than contemporary commentators might expect. Documenting the first wave of PAC formation from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, when major interest groups began creating them, she shows how PACs were envisaged from the outset as much more than a means of winning elections, but as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties. In doing so, Charnock not only locates the rise of PACs within the larger story of interest group electioneering - which went from something rare and controversial at the beginning of the 20th Century to ubiquitous today - but also within the narrative of political polarization. Throughout, she offers a full picture of PACs as far more than financial vehicles, showing how they were electoral innovators who pioneered strategies and tactics that came to pervade modern US campaigns and reshape American politics. A broad-ranging political history of an understudied American campaign phenomenon, this book contextualizes the power and purpose of PACs, while revealing their transformative role within the American party system - helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today.

Political Action Committees (PACs) are a prominent and contentious feature of modern American election campaigns. As organizations that channel money toward political candidates and causes, their influence in recent decades has been widely noted and often decried. Yet, there has been no comprehensive history compiled of their origins, development, and impact over time. In The Rise of Political Action Committees, Emily J. Charnock addresses this gap, telling a story with much deeper roots than contemporary commentators might expect. Documenting the first wave of PAC formation from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, when major interest groups began creating them, she shows how PACs were envisaged from the outset as much more than a means of winning elections, but as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties. In doing so, Charnock not only locates the rise of PACs within the larger story of interest group electioneering - which went from something rare and controversial at the beginning of the 20th Century to ubiquitous today - but also within the narrative of political polarization. Throughout, she offers a full picture of PACs as far more than financial vehicles, showing how they were electoral innovators who pioneered strategies and tactics that came to pervade modern US campaigns and reshape American politics. A broad-ranging political history of an understudied American campaign phenomenon, this book contextualizes the power and purpose of PACs, while revealing their transformative role within the American party system - helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today.

“Reveals a political trend that threatens both our form of government and our species.” - Timothy Snyder, author of ON TYRANNY "Riveting.... Want to understand how so many Americans turned against truth? Read this book." Nancy Maclean, author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today. In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided. In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading.

How popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide, and how to restore confidence in democratic politics In recent decades, democracies across the world have adopted measures to increase popular involvement in political decisions. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates; ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly; many places now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more specific parties rather than two dominant ones.Yet voters keep getting angrier.There is a steady erosion of trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating most recently in major populist victories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that devolving power to the grass roots is part of the problem. Efforts to decentralize political decision-making have made governments and especially political parties less effective and less able to address constituents’ long-term interests. They argue that to restore confidence in governance, we must restructure our political systems to restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party.

An illuminating history and groundbreaking investigation tracing how a single trade organization turned itself into the most dangerous political weapon in America When Americans hear the words “Chamber of Commerce,” many still think of the local business associations that spruce up Main Streets and sponsor Little League teams around the country. But the United States Chamber of Commerce is a different animal altogether. The Chamber was originally founded to give big business a voice during the long—and now almost inconceivable—period in American history that saw the rise of workers’ rights, consumer protections, and environmental awareness as national priorities. But over time, driven by an antigovernment ideology and its desire for financial and political power, the Chamber metastasized into a fighting force designed to protect the worst excesses of American industry. The Chamber, through its veiled corporate sponsors, can take credit for some of the most disturbing trends in American life: the reversal of environmental protections, the destruction of unions and worker protections, the rise of virulent antigovernment ideology, the enlarged role of money in campaigns, and the creation of “astroturf” movements as cover for a corporate agenda. Through its propaganda, lobbying, and campaign cash, the Chamber has created a right-wing monster that even it struggles to control, a conservative movement that is destabilizing American democracy as never before. The Influence Machine tells this history as a series of gripping narratives that take us into the backrooms of Washington, where the battles over how our country is run and regulated are fought, and then out into the world, where we see how the Chamber’s campaigns play out in real lives. In the end, Alyssa Katz reveals the hidden weaknesses of this seeming juggernaut and shows how its antidemocratic agenda can be reversed. Praise for The Influence Machine “Important and probing . . . a valuable and a sobering contribution to the study of power in American society . . . Katz has assembled a work of synthesis and insight. . . . The chamber has, she argues, effectively countered the influence of labor unions and contributed to the widening economic divide in American society. Those points are made forcefully and backed up impressively.”—Los Angeles Times “An urgent look at the ‘political assault weapon’ that is transforming the country . . . [Katz] does invaluable work in tracing how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a relentless engine for pressing a ‘business of enterprise unfettered by government.’ . . . An eye-opening, maddening read.”—Kirkus Reviews “With clarity and verve, but without polemic, investigative journalist Katz describes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s evolution into a many-armed behemoth. . . . [She] illustrates with several examples of how the organization has managed to influence courts, strong-arm Congress, cripple federal agencies, and sway the public with ‘voter education’ ads—and, more recently, it has exported cutthroat American business practices abroad.”—Publishers Weekly