Dialing for Dollars, Dialing for Domination: Normatively Evaluating the Congressional Fundraising Imperative

I refer to both members of the House and the Senate as “Congresspersons.”

Since the habit of campaign spending is widespread among the affluent (e.g., Cook et al. 2014), I use the terms “donors,” “wealthy Americans,” and their equivalents interchangeably.

Ian Shapiro (2016, 93–97) pays closer attention to campaign finance than domination theorists typically do. Shapiro only makes passing reference to the fundraising imperative, however, and does not elaborate on why he believes that the “arms-logic of fundraising” occasions domination (2016, 97). For Shapiro, the primary way the American campaign spending regime promotes domination is by allowing well-resourced donors to limit the range of perspectives to which voters are exposed during election campaigns: i.e., by “saturating…media markets and drowning out competing views” (2016, 96). Shapiro’s analysis thus does not obviate the need for an account that identifies, in a sustained and in-depth manner, the role that the fundraising imperative might play in encouraging domination in the American political context.

Due to the strong status quo bias that characterizes Congressional decision-making, it is much easier for politically influential sectors of society to block the consideration and passage of measures that they oppose than it is for them to ensure the enactment of those they support (Gilens 2012).

I refer to this as “domination” from this point on for brevity’s sake, although it is, strictly speaking, a specific kind of domination.

Domination theorists often refer to this condition as that of “arbitrary” dependence. As the term “arbitrariness” often has connotations that are distinct from dependence upon the wills and whims of others in ordinary parlance, however, I refrain from using it here to avoid confusion.

In this regard, the present conception of domination differs from Shapiro’s, for whom domination involves actual abuse of power “into the service of an illegitimate purpose” (2012, 308). My conception tracks the standard scholarly understanding of domination.

Although the protection and furthering of basic interests is necessary for a self-ordered existence, it is not sufficient for the same. There are many other preconditions that need to be satisfied for persons to be able to live entirely in accordance with their own choices and plans. The absence of domination is thus just one element of freedom understood as the ability to lead a self-ordered existence (see also Pettit 1997).

Economic inequality, it is worth mentioning, tends to fall when Democrats control Congress (Bartels 2016).

While Lessig and I both take issue with the fundraising imperative for promoting dependence, we are concerned with different kinds of dependence. For Lessig, the fundraising imperative occasions a “dependency” on the part of Congress on wealthy donors—thereby giving rise to concerns of political corruption. On my account, in contrast, the problem with the fundraising imperative is that it likely renders non-affluent citizens dependent on the wealthy—thus occasioning concerns about domination and unfreedom. Lessig does not advert to this latter sort of dependence anywhere.

This would also be the case if Congress were to track the preferences of the majority on a near-exclusive basis, as other majoritarian critics of the fundraising imperative argue that it must to be regarded as normatively legitimate (Page and Gilens 2020; Stephanopoulos 2015).

Page and Gilens (2020, chap. 1) argue that democracy means rule in accordance with majority preferences on a near-exclusive basis. As Sabl (2015) notes, however, virtually no democratic theorist understands democracy in this way, indicating that there are good reasons against endorsing such robustly majoritarian conceptions of democracy.

While not entirely opposed to clean elections reforms, Lessig is clear that he much prefers democracy vouchers over them (2012, 264–265). This preference makes sense given his strong commitment to robust majoritarianism.

As the fundraising imperative is not the sole cause of the domination that the non-affluent likely experience, reforming campaign finance alone cannot protect against it. Widespread economic, social, and political reforms are needed to robustly insulate the non-wealthy against the risk of domination by the affluent.