Doctoral Dissertation Research: Financing American Elections: Individual Contributors and the National Resource Constituency

SES-1031085 Jeff Manza Jennifer Heerwig约克大学社会和政治不平等之间的关系对代议制民主的运作至关重要。 在美国政治的背景下，学者们提出，最积极的公民？活跃的游击队员可能在根本上不同于那些较少参与政治进程的人。 鉴于收入不平等最近迅速加剧，这些问题变得越来越紧迫。本文探讨了一种重要但研究不足的政治参与类型的长期趋势：个人对政治运动的贡献。使用我将从联邦选举委员会记录中构建的原始数据集，这项研究将记录有关个人捐赠者库的基本描述性证据（即谁捐赠了多少钱，频率是多少？）。该研究项目也将是第一个系统地研究重复捐赠者的小但重要的核心，他们代表了个人捐赠的不断增长的份额？那个？国家资源选区？ 在就不断变化的选举联盟对政党制度的影响开展工作之后，该项目还将寻求揭示捐助者群体支助的社会基础的重新调整。 这项研究的结果将提供有关加深经济不平等对美国公众代表性的可能影响的关键，政策相关的知识。 该项目的另一个贡献是创建和传播一个独特的、以前无法获得的1980年至今联邦运动个人贡献者数据集。从联邦选举委员会开始？虽然该组织的数据可以在其网站上找到，但这些数据是逐项列出个人捐款，而不是单个捐款人，过去的学术努力无法准确地跟踪捐款人的时间变化，也无法准确地跟踪捐款人的集中程度。 该项目将是第一个这样做的项目，完成后将为更广泛的社区提供精英政治参与的宝贵目录。

SES-1031085Jeff ManzaJennifer HeerwigNew York UniversityThe relationship between social and political inequality is crucial to a functioning representative democracy. In the context of American politics, scholars have suggested that the most active citizens?active partisans?may differ in fundamental ways from those who participate in the political process less frequently. Given the recent and rapid increase in income inequality, these questions are becoming ever more pressing. This dissertation examines long-term trends in one important but under-studied type of political participation: individual contributions to political campaigns. Using an original dataset I will build from Federal Election Commission records, this study will document basic descriptive evidence about the individual donor pool (i.e. who contributes and in what amounts, with what frequency?). The research project will also be the first to systematically examine the small but important core of repeat donors, who represent an ever-growing share of contributions from individuals?the ?national resource constituency?. Following work on the impact of changing electoral coalitions on the party system, the project will also seek to uncover realignments in the social bases of support of the donor poolBroader Impacts. The findings of this study will provide crucial, policy relevant knowledge about the likely effects of deepening economic inequalities on the representation of the American public. A further contribution of this project will be to create and disseminate a unique, previously unavailable dataset of individual contributors to federal campaigns from 1980 to present. Since the Federal Election Commission?s data, available on its website, itemizes individual contributions rather than individual contributors, past scholarly efforts have been unable to accurately track donors over time or, likewise, the concentration of the donor base. This project will be the first to do so and will, upon completion, provide a valuable catalog of elite political participation to the broader community.