Public Funding of Non-Legislative Elections

1 This précis sets out a framework for studying the impact of public election funding on public policy outcomes. I focus on non-legislative elections—gubernatorial, judicial, and commission—and zero in on policy impact. The motivations for reform are far more expansive; chief among them is minimizing the “appearance of corruption ” in an effort to improve citizen perceptions of government and increase turnout. This anti-corruption rationale is also cited by the courts in upholding the constitutionality of campaign finance reforms. That said, my research with Jeff Milyo (Primo and Milyo 2005, 2006) has demonstrated that campaign finance reforms historically have had little to no impact on either turnout or perceptions of government. In fact, public funding sometimes has a small negative effect on such measures. While future work might explore the impact of new public funding regimes on trust, political efficacy, and turnout, I am skeptical that these laws will have any appreciable systematic and long-lasting impact on these aspects of politics. We also might reasonably ask why it makes sense to focus on public policy outcomes. After all, existing research in the congressional literature has found virtually no impact o