Understanding the influence of campaign contributions on legislative outcomes is a critical task for campaign finance scholars, as it is a central ethical concern within the American political system. Lynda W. Powell, in The Influence of Campaign Contributions in State Legislatures, correctly points out that the traditional way to study this issue—establishing causal connections between contributions and roll call votes—is limited, because contributions can influence politics in many other ways (such as by setting the agenda or blocking legislation). Powell takes a different approach by relying on a survey of 3,000 state legislators that asks them about the influence of money in their legislative chamber. Even though elite surveys have their own shortcomings, her study makes a welcome and important contribution to the literature by approaching the issue of contributor influence from a different direction that complements the existing studies of roll call votes.

Powell begins by analyzing the factors that influence the time spent by legislators fund-raising for their own campaigns and for their caucus (given the new realities of fund-raising, this distinction is critically important). Raising money has both benefits and costs for legislators; even though money can help them in their reelection efforts, extensive fund-raising can alienate voters and take away from time available for other beneficial activities, such as attending campaign events. The author examines how individual and institutional factors alter this cost–benefit equation. Not surprisingly, ambitious legislators (those who seek higher office) spend more time fund-raising, although term limits create incentives to spend less. Legislators in competitive elections spend more time raising funds for themselves but less for their caucus, while “clean money” reforms prompt candidates to spend less time raising funds for themselves and more for the caucus. She also explores legislator’s “rate of return”—the amount of money that time spent on fund-raising can bring—and finds that the size of the state economy, leadership position held, contribution limits, and a host of other factors all influence the rate of return. The model she presents does an excellent job of explaining most of the variation in rate of return across legislators, a task that few (if any) other scholars have undertaken.

The next part of the book focuses on the macro level, exploring variation across legislative chambers. Powell starts by analyzing how institutional factors affect the perception of contributor influence. She finds that legislative compensation, ambition for higher office, and the number of members in the chamber increase the perceived influence of contributions, while term limits and high constituency education levels decrease it. She also analyzes the factors that influence the importance that legislators attach to leadership fund-raising for the caucus, concluding that smaller legislative majorities prompt members to put more of a focus on caucus fund-raising, as does leader compensation and the ambition of legislators. The book concludes with an examination of the relationship between contributing and lobbying. Powell argues that there is scant evidence for the notion that lobbying enhances legislative effectiveness by providing information to legislators. She establishes a link between time spent fund-raising and reliance on lobbyists for information; the fact that the most active fund-raisers are also those who rely most on lobbyists for information suggests that contributions and lobbying are connected in a “pay-to-play” system.

Even though Powell’s study adds significantly to our understanding of the role played by contributions in state legislatures, there are a few areas where the analysis could have been strengthened. First, the two central parts of the book are only tenuously connected, as they address analytically distinct questions: What factors influence the amount of time legislators spend fund-raising, and what factors influence the importance of those contributions for legislative outcomes? Powell tries to connect the two by arguing that the amount of time spent fund-raising is a factor affecting the level of influence, but this causal connection does not quite work. Just because a legislator spends more time raising funds does not mean that he or she is more susceptible to influence. In fact, the more money a legislator raises, the less he or she may be influenced by any given contribution. The data show that there is a correlation between time spent fund-raising and the influence of contributions within legislatures, but the causal connection here is unclear (for example, both could be caused by some third factor). Thus, the book has two foci, and the analysis would have been strengthened if they were treated as separate issues, not variations on the same question.

This leads to a second problem, which is the theory underlying Powell’s analysis of contributor influence in Chapter 6. As she correctly points out, there is little theorizing as to the factors that affect the influence of contributions across legislative bodies. To compensate, she borrows many of the hypotheses from her analysis of time spent fund-raising and applies them, with some adjustments, to this analysis. This does not work, as there are different causal mechanisms involved in legislators’ decisions to spend time fund-raising and their decisions to be influenced by campaign contributors. A better approach would have been to fill in this theoretical gap by exploring how and why various institutional factors could potentially affect the level of influence within chambers, drawing upon both the campaign finance and state politics literatures to develop an original theory.

There are some shortcomings with the survey itself (which was designed with a focus on term limits). In particular, the question about the influence of campaign contributions is a broad one that includes the “content and passage” of bills in the respondent’s chamber. As Powell notes, there are many ways that contributions can influence and there can be extensive variation in both the extent and manner of influence across chambers. Thus, it would have been valuable to have a battery of questions that explored how contributions influence agenda setting, amending activity, and other facets of the legislative process. The issue of influence could also have been approached from different angles, for example, by having legislators respond to scenarios whereby contributions could play a role in affecting legislative outcomes. Questions about the amount raised (not just time spent fund-raising) would have also added an additional dimension to the analysis.

Finally, an exploration of policy implications would have strengthened Powell’s analysis. Campaign finance reform is a perennial policy issue that is often distorted by partisan analysis and uninformed opinions. The author’s balanced and systematic study could enlighten these debates, although the implications of her study for policy are not obvious. Examining how her findings can inform policy efforts to limit corruption and reform the campaign finance system would have highlighted the value of her study.

Despite these issues, there is much to commend in this study. Even though there is extensive research on the influence of campaign contributions, no previous study has attempted to explore variation across state legislatures, a valuable analysis that can illuminate the factors that contribute to influence. There are other innovations as well, such as the rate-of-return analysis and the careful delineation of fund-raising for one’s own campaign and for the caucus. In sum, The Influence of Campaign Contributions in State Legislatures provides a fresh perspective on a variety of issues related to the influence of campaign contributions and makes a solid contribution to the literature.