Money in American Elections

Here is a lucid, groundbreaking book on money in American elections that defines the subject and puts its complex and often arcane components into an orderly, comprehensible picture. This balance overview centers on congressional and presidential campaigns and the individuals, PACs, parties, and public monies that fund them. Professor Sorauf also deals systematically with the politics of campaign finance and with the important issues of policy and impact that surround the entire subject. Without moralism and without muckraking, this comprehensive work decisively takes up the concern that money affects the outcomes of elections, that it wins undue influence in the making of public policy, and that it creates a new class of influentials in American Politics. The following from the author's Introduction: "The plan of this book should be evident from its structure and text, even from its table of contents. But an author's hopes for a book may be less apparent. I have written this one to bring what have been disparate materials into a summary and interpretation of what we know about a single subject: the way we finance American election campaigns. I hope it will help to organize and define, both for research and for teaching, what can easily seem to be a mixture of arcane data, insider's lore, and heated judgments."