Since Buckley v. Valeo, campaign finance jurisprudence has been riven by the constitutional limits on the regulation of funded campaign speech. The Court’s enduring but unpopular compromise that contributions can be limited to prevent corruption but that the right to free speech prevents the restriction of expenditures has been assailed as both too restrictive and insufficiently robust. The debate is typically cast as a straightforward question of which source of power is the greater threat: plutocratic wealth that can corrupt leaders, or a state that can oppress its citizens. However, this intractable conflict can be unified by considering democratic governance as a matter of constituent self-rule. Neither private nor state influence over campaign media overdetermines the results of elections; both operate to influence voters. The critical question is what poses the greater threat to voter cognition and preference development. This observation, framed by a Kantian understanding of free will, captures the true core of the judicial debates – contestation over what circumstances pose the greatest threat to the autonomy of voter preference formation.

How politically powerful is business in American politics? Does the political power of business distort the quality of democratic representation? This chapter reviews the literature on these vital questions, discussing selected studies in political science, sociology, history, and other fields. It finds that assessments of business influence in American politics have varied considerably over time, but it also observes there has been a broad turn in recent scholarship toward the notion that business is “more equal” than other groups in the American political system. A small but growing number of studies—especially studies focusing on politics in our time—has begun to provide credible evidence of business influence. We have also seen the introduction of some exciting new ideas about the ways that business influence, economic inequality, and political representation may be theoretically connected. But definitive conclusions remain elusive. We do not really know whether business is disproportionately powerful and how business influence affects the performance of American democracy. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about the kind of studies that are needed going forward.

Americans are concerned about both inequalities in political influence between the rich and poor and the dominant role of interest groups and lobbyists in Washington. Yet even among interest groups, there is vast inequality in the capacity to lobby. As the interest group population has expanded, an increasingly stable interest group “top tier” has emerged with vastly more resources. Groups in this top tier have remained at the top, even as other groups move in and out. Although resources do not guarantee influence, being at the top of the lobbying hierarchy likely enables organizations to better compete for scarce attention. We illustrate these patterns using a new data set of all 37,706 organizations reporting lobbying between 1998 and 2012. We show that an increasingly persistent top tier of 100 organizations spends roughly a third of all lobbying expenditures, hires a third of all lobbyists, and shows remarkable breadth of issue interest. The results may help resolve conflict between prior findings that the highest-spending interest groups usually get what they want, but no particular resource advantage or advocacy tactic consistently buys policy outcomes