This dissertation consists of three related essays on the motivations and behavior of individual political donors. These essays test theoretical predictions from the campaign finance and political behavior literature using field experiments and a natural experiment, bolstering the causal interpretation of the findings. The first essay reports the results of a field experiment examining the effect of political information on the decision to contribute. In advance of the November 2014 election, postcards with information about the major party candidates for Ohio governor and secretary of state were mailed to nearly 40,000 randomly selected likely donors in Ohio. The messages in these mailings, seven in all, provided factual information regarding campaign fundraising and endorsements, as well as a simple election reminder. Notably, the messages did not include encouragements to donate or partisan cues. The experimental results show that partisan donors respond to electoral threats as well as electoral opportunities under different conditions. Donors are more likely to give to the stronger candidate when they receive a simple election reminder with no fundraising information. But when donors see which candidates are ahead and behind in total fundraising, donors give more to the candidate who is behind while donations to the candidate with more money are unaffected. The results show that donors respond to objective information about fundraising weakness in order to help their preferred candidate. The second essay (co-authored) uses experimental designs to explore two possible paths to expanding the number of small donors. First, we examine whether nonpartisan appeals, of the kind that nonprofit groups or governments could use, expand the donor base. The results suggest that one type of nonpartisan message represents a promising fundraising appeal: encouraging subjects to contribute in order to keep elected officials focused on policy issues of importance to the potential donor. Second, we determine whether informing the public about existing incentives for making small contributions increases the number and size of contributions. We report the results of two field experiments that randomly provided information to likely donors about municipal- and state-level incentives for making political contributions. Across the two experiments, we find little evidence that information about contribution incentives increases giving. The third essay examines the effect of presidential political advertisements on contributing to the presidential campaigns of the major party candidates. I examine the effect of aggregate political advertising on aggregate contributing at the media zone level, and also estimate the effects of each party’s advertisements separately on giving to the party’s presidential campaign. I find that aggregate advertisements may have an effect on aggregate giving, but this effect is substantively small (much smaller than previous scholars have found) and inconsistent across different model specifications. In addition, I find that examining aggregate amounts may mask differences between the parties. During the 2008 election, Democratic presidential advertisements had a small, but detectable, positive effect on giving to the Democratic campaign. By contrast, Republican advertisements did not significantly increase giving to the Republican campaign in 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 2, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-166).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-161). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-161).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed October 13, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation comprises three chapters that explore and expand on the use of experimentation and randomization in the study of courts, judges, and the law: Chapter 1: This Chapter reviews the two most prominent procedural approaches to addressing judicial conflicts of interest in U.S. courts—judicial self-recusal and in-court disclosure. These procedural approaches fail to account for the legal and institutional dynamics that surround the relationship between judges, attorneys, and the adjudicative process. I argue that judges do not recuse themselves, that attorneys will not ask them to, and that if we understand both the legal and extra-legal incentives at play in these decisions, this should not surprise us. The shortcomings of recusal and disclosure are particularly salient in the context of judicial campaign finance, where judges often face the acute dilemma of being assigned to preside over cases in which one of the parties or attorneys has contributed to their election campaign. To support these claims, Chapter 1 presents the results of a randomized field experiment which I identify active Wisconsin and Texas civil cases that feature donor-attorneys. The experiment randomly assigns a portion of the judges presiding over these cases to receive a letter from an NGO identifying the potential conflict and requesting recusal. The empirical results support the growing skepticism surrounding judicial self-recusal and raise doubts that judicial disclosure is an efficacious remedy. Building on these results, the Chapter explores two potential alternatives—one procedural and one institutional—that better account for the realities of judicial conflicts of interest and the incentives of court actors. Chapter 2: This Chapter contributes to the growing literature challenging the general assumption of and reliance on random judicial assignment by identifying common court procedures and practices that threaten unbiased causal inference. These “de-randomizing” events, including differing probabilities of assignment, post-assignment judicial changes, non-random missingness, and non-random assignment itself, should be accounted for when making causal claims but are commonly either ignored or not even recognized by researchers utilizing random judicial assignment. The Chapter explores how these de-randomizing events violate the key empirical assumptions underlying randomized studies and offers methodological solutions and presents original data from a survey of the 30 largest U.S. state-level criminal courts, outlining their assignment protocols and identifying the extent to which they feature the de-randomizing events described. Chapter 3: In Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar (2015), the Supreme Court ruled that a Florida law banning direct campaign solicitation by judicial candidates was not a violation of the First Amendment. In doing so, the majority relied on several untested empirical claims, including the assertion that direct solicitation has a distinctly stronger impact on the public’s confidence in the judiciary than indirect solicitation. This chapter provides a short but focused evaluation of these empirical claims. A nationally-representative survey experiment presents subjects with a hypothetical vignette in which a state trial-level judge runs for election and utilizes one of various campaign fundraising tactics. The survey then presents subjects with questions relating to the trust and legitimacy that they associate with both the judicial system presented in the vignette and their actual state- and federal-level government institutions. The results suggest that the public does not discern any significant difference between direct and indirect judicial solicitation but does see other judicial campaign features (promises of recusal and the amount of the donations) as salient in regard to trust and legitimacy. These findings are at odds with the empirical assumptions that the majority relied upon in the Williams-Yulee decision and highlight the value that survey experiments can play in evaluating empirical claims made by the Supreme Court.

Recent changes to campaign finance laws in Canada and the United States provide researchers with a unique opportunity for comparative studies on the effects of reform on fundraising at the grassroots level. In an effort to contribute to the understanding of these recent reforms the following comparative case study examines the effects of Bill C-24 (2003) and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 on the campaigns of one Canadian Member of Parliament and one American Congressional Representative. The study suggests that while the impact of the most recent American reforms has been somewhat exaggerated by scholars, changes to campaign finance laws in Canada have caused substantial change at both the national and grassroots level.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-244).

There are proportionally fewer Hispanic Americans, African Americans and women in Congress than in the United States population. Existing literature prescribes a variety of explanations for this disparity including skewed nominations procedures, differing participation rates, racial gerrymandering, voting biases, and funding inequities. This study revisits one aspect of the underrepresentation issue: campaign contributions. Money has been an integral component of the electoral process since before the American Revolution and its impact on the current composition of Congress ought to be explored to a greater extent. Previous research shows that contributors rarely, if at all, discriminate on the basis of gender. This study intends to further investigate the congressional campaign funding of African Americans and provide some much needed insight regarding the campaign financing of Hispanic American candidates. Using financial and biographical data from each candidate within the 2004 and 2008 election cycles, a multiple regression model will be employed to evaluate the extent to which gender and minority status determine the distribution of congressional campaign funds independent of other electability traits considered influential by contributors (the percentage of vote received in the last election, incumbency, and the leadership position held are indications of candidate strength that affect campaign contributions). The magnitude and statistical significance of these coefficients provides further understanding into funding inequities