Available in Russian
Author: Vitaliy Elizarov
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2024-3-115-134
Keywords: The Supreme Court of the United States; election campaign law; election campaign finance; legal reforms; election campaign reforms; legal regulation of election campaign financing
The article identifies two major waves of legal reforms of election campaign finance in the United States: 1971–2001 and 2002 – present. The first wave of reforms began in 1971 with the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act, establishing legal frameworks for the regulation of election campaign finance in the United States. In 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo struck down parts of the 1971 Act. The second wave began in 2002 with passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which tightened the legal limits on election campaign finance. The 2014 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck down the most controversial provisions of the 2002 Act. The article reconstructs the logic of legal reforms of election campaign financing during this period and argues that the direction of these reforms was determined by the confrontation between proponents of two legal traditions: libertarian and egalitarian. Depending on affiliation with one or the other of these traditions, the American legal community (both academic researchers, legislators and law-practitioners) chose corresponding legal tools for regulating campaign finance reforms. In the libertarian model, legislation protects freedom of public expression and creates more favorable conditions for new political players to enter the arena of election campaign politics. The cost of this model is the increased inequality of financial opportunity for candidates and political parties participating in election campaign competition. In the egalitarian model, legislation ensures formal financial equality of election campaign contestants and protection from financial foreign influence. The price for this is reduced opportunity for new political movements to speak publicly and increased chances for the ruling group to retain power.
About the author: Vitaliy Elizarov – andidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Politics, Associate Professor, Department of Theory of State and Law, Saint Petersburg State University of Economics, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Citation: Elizarov V. (2024) Dva shaga vperyod, odin shag nazad: pravovye reformy electoral'nogo finansirovaniya v SShA [Two steps forward, one step back: legal reforms of election campaign finance in USA]. Sranvitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.33, no.3, pp.115–134. (In Russian).
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