The Appearance of Corruption: Testing the Supreme Court`s Assumptions about Campaign Finance Reform, Shaw Daron R., Roberts Brian E., Baek Mijeong

In The Appearance of Corruption, Daron Shaw, Brian Roberts, and Mijeong Baek analyze the connections that the Court made between campaign finance regulations and voters behavior. The court argued that an increase in perceived corruption would lower engagement and turnout. Drawing from original
survey data and experiments, they confront the question of what happens when the Supreme Court is wrong-and when the foundation of over 40 years of jurisprudence is simply not true. Even with the heightened awareness of campaign finance issues that emerged in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United
decision, there is little empirical support for the Courts reasoning that turnout would decline. A rigorous statistical analysis, this is the first work to simultaneously name and test each and every one of the Courts assumptions in the pre- and post-Citizens United eras. It will also
fundamentally reshape how we think about campaign finance regulations effects on voter behavior.