George L. Priest, the John M. Olin Professor of Law and Economics at Yale Law School and a member of AEI's Council of Academic Advisers, delivered the seventh of the Institute's 1999-2000 Bradley Lectures on March 6. Edited excerpts follow.

My ambition today is to reanalyze the campaign finance question from a different vantage than is common in the two basic approaches to it that dominate the modern debate. One of these approaches is what we might call the campaign finance "reform" tradition— literature that is highly critical of the role of money in the electoral process and that supports extending current campaign finance regulations, eventually toward the substitution of government campaign financing in place of financing directly by the citizenry. The second and contrary approach derives from the values of the First Amendment. It views the citizen's right to make campaign contributions and expenditures as speech and as a form of citizen association. Thus, it opposes current limitations— all limitations—on private campaign finance.

Those two opposing approaches to the issue can both count many eminent supporters. But I believe that the current debate between them has come to a dead end. The debate has failed because neither tradition illuminates very clearly how the financing of campaigns by private citizens contributes to or derogates from our system of politics. The absolutist position of both sides of the debate has not advanced, and shows no prospect of ever advancing, our understanding of the role of money in politics. It is time for a new approach.

Elections and Markets

The principle of one person/one vote, along with the legal limitations on campaign finance, reduces dramatically the ability of any citizen, within a district or without, to register intensity of political support for a candidate or a cause. Participation must take the form of the modest campaign contribution allowed by current law or an in-kind contribution of time or energy. In market terms, these political constraints reduce the gains from trade—, the trade of political commitment— suppress comparative advantage.

I accept that the principle of one person/one vote is an important affirmation of the political and moral equality of citizens— the election itself. In the debate that precedes the election, however, there is no normative value from suppressing—— of political view by limitations on private finance. The political views and ideals of citizens are not distributed equally— should they be. In a vibrant and lively democracy, the political views of citizens vary dramatically in intensity from indifference to some issues to passionate commitment to others.

Limitations on private political contributions thus impoverish, rather than enrich, our democratic political environment. Since I am not allowed to vote in California, apart from the modest contribution I am allowed, any contribution to the California political debate will be highly unlikely unless I feel extremely strongly about a particular issue. The geographic limitations of our elections and our campaign finance constraints are the equivalent of high tariffs or a prohibition on trade in out-of-state political views.

I am not merely making the points here that unlimited private finance will provide a richer political environment than limited private finance or that privatized finance will be richer than government-provided finance, though I believe that both are true. My claim is stronger: There are systemic obstacles in our electoral system that prevent citizens from fully registering their political views. These are: the constraints of geographical limitation on the franchise; time limitations because of periodic elections; and the obstacle, imposed by the equally weighted vote, of the inability to register intensity of political views. We might think of these limitations as electoral failures, corresponding to the concept of market failures.

Again, those obstacles are systemic and cannot be realistically repaired by amendments to our electoral process. Those limitations, however, can be overcome by campaign contributions. Through contributions to campaigns, a citizen from Connecticut can register his or her political views in California and contribute to political mobilization. Contributions to campaigns or promises of future contributions can increase the likelihood that a candidate will honor his or her election promises, just as a bond enforces performance of a commercial contract.

Most important, campaign contributions can allow those citizens who feel intensely about a candidate or a political issue to register that intensity. This approach, I believe, is richer than simply advocating that money is speech, because it shows how money is related to speech. The $1,000 limitation on contributions to candidates means that no citizen is easily able to register any level of intensity of commitment beyond that which the citizen might feel for, say, four good tickets to the New York Knicks or two round-trip airfares to Colorado. Our political debate in this country deserves to be richer than that.