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

Jennifer HeerwigNew York University社会和政治不平等之间的关系对于一个有效的代议制民主至关重要。在美国政治的背景下，学者们提出，最活跃的公民--活跃的党派人士--可能在根本上与那些较少参与政治进程的人有所不同。鉴于最近收入不平等的迅速加剧，这些问题正变得越来越紧迫。这篇论文考察了一种重要但研究不足的政治参与类型的长期趋势：个人对政治竞选的贡献。使用我将从联邦选举委员会记录中建立的原始数据集，这项研究将记录关于个人捐赠者池的基本描述性证据(即谁捐款、捐款金额和频率？)。该研究项目还将首次系统地研究重复捐赠者这一小而重要的核心群体，这些捐赠者在个人--国家资源群体--的捐款中所占的份额越来越大。在研究选举联盟变化对政党制度的影响的工作之后，该项目还将寻求揭示捐助者群体支持的社会基础之间的重新结盟关系。这项研究的结果将提供关键的、与政策相关的知识，了解经济不平等加剧对美国公众代表性的可能影响。该项目的另一个贡献将是创建和传播一个独特的、以前无法获得的、从1980年到现在的联邦竞选个人贡献者的数据集。联邦选举委员会？S的数据可以在其网站上找到，因为它列出的是个人捐款，而不是个人捐赠者，过去的学术研究一直无法准确追踪捐赠者随时间的变化，或者同样地，无法追踪捐赠者基础的集中度。这个项目将是第一个这样做的项目，完成后将向更广泛的社区提供一份宝贵的精英政治参与目录。

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.