capitalism

106 Corruption
political favors, they would lose confidence in the government.
Thus, contribution limits and other restrictions are
said to bolster confidence in government by mitigating this
appearance of corruption. However, as Nathaniel Persily
discovered, campaign finance appears to have no real relationship
one way or the other to trust in government. In any
case, public trust in government tends to reduce, rather than
protect, individual liberty. Thomas Burke has identified two
other conceptions of corruption in U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
The conception of corruption centering on distortion
assumes that official actions should closely reflect public
opinion: “Campaign contributions are corrupting to the
extent that they do not reflect the balance of public opinion
and thus distort policymaking through their influence on
elections.” The Supreme Court has applied this concept of
distortion to bless state restrictions on political activity by
businesses whose wealth and campaign donations do not
reflect public opinion. The “monetary influence” conception
says public officials are corrupt if they perform their duties
with monetary considerations in mind; sometimes contributions
are said to create political debts that endanger the
integrity of the system. Campaign contributions can thus
corrupt governing even if no explicit deals are made.
Distortion as a corrupt practice assumes that policymaking
should follow public opinion. This idea leaves little
room for constitutional constraints on majorities or for
intense minority views that might one day persuade a
majority. In particular, the illiberal idea that existing public
opinion should provide a standard for limiting participation
in politics enshrines the status quo. Fortunately, this
conception of corruption has been largely ignored by the
Supreme Court. The “monetary influence” conception of
corruption has been joined to ideals of deliberative democracy.
Dennis Thompson argues that representatives should
deliberate about the public good. Private interests are permitted
in a deliberative democracy, but those who advance
them must frame their interests in broader arguments about
the public good. It is argued that money corrupts politics
when contributions enable private interests to make policy
or direct their energies for purely private reasons.
However, campaign donations have a legitimate place in
a liberal republic. They may support speech and other political
activities to advance an ideal of the public good. How
then can citizens or public officials distinguish corrupt and
laudable contributions? The motivations of the giver are
difficult or perhaps impossible to discern, particularly when
purely private interests become skilled at transforming their
self-interest into arguments for the common good. The
deliberative standard seems unworkable, especially given
the important liberties that hang in the balance. Bruce Cain
has objected that deliberative democrats misconstrue the
nature of American politics and thus its corruption or
integrity. The American founders did not create a deliberative
republic in which representatives act as trustees of the
public good. Instead, policymakers aggregate preferences
that citizens reveal through votes, campaign contributions,
voluntary associations, and other ways. The representative
in this pluralist republic is a delegate for the preferences of
his constituents. Apart from bribery, the monetary conception
of corruption makes no sense in this republic; donations
are a weapon in political struggle and a way to better
inform social choices.
Is this conception of pluralism compatible with a liberal
government? Pluralism offers a justification for public
power after constitutional constraints were abrogated with
the New Deal. Groups struggle over policy in a world where
government power over economic life observes few limits.
Pluralists see themselves as the intellectual heirs of James
Madison, but some differences should be noted. Madison
believed in a liberal, constitutional republic in which group
struggle helped sustain the limited nature of the government.
Pluralists recognize no such restraints. Private interests
organize and seek to win in policy struggles. The result can
be rent seeking, which libertarians regard as corruption. Of
course, the organization of groups also may constrain state
power, but the limits here are only partially Madisonian.
Madison’s commitment to constitutions and liberalism has
been lost to most writers who embrace the pluralist conception
of politics. The deliberative democrat seeks to tame private
avarice and abuses of government power through
restrictions on money in politics. Thus, although it is true
that the concerns of pluralists and the deliberative democrats
at times intersect with those of libertarians, both differ in
fundamental ways. As Bradley Smith argues, it is doubtful
that reforms can constrain abuses of power in a postconstitutional
regime like the United States.
Other approaches to corruption exist. Scholars have
recently given much attention to classical republicanism.
Their findings have sometimes deeply contravened liberal
notions. Gordon Wood, for example, writes that “ideally,
republicanism obliterated the individual” in early America.
In recounting the American view of civic virtue in the
1770s, Wood writes of the “willingness of the individual to
sacrifice his private interests for the good of the community.”
Individual liberty in this regard becomes something
akin to corruption of the citizen. Similarly, contemporary
communitarians seem to equate individual liberty with selfishness
and social decline. Such characterizations assume
that any conduct not directed to the common good of a society
must be thought corrupt. This hope for a Spartan regime
has little in common with liberty.
Yet the problem of private interests in politics lingers for
the libertarian. Most libertarians blame the expansion of the
state for corruption. Hence, if we reduce what the government
does, we also will reduce corruption. But if voters are
corrupt in a libertarian sense, liberty may foster corruption
and the expansion of the state. Americans have the liberty
to engage in politics. When they do, they form groups that
seek redistributed wealth for their members or lobby for
restrictions on the liberty of others that would benefit them.