Interest Groups and Campaign Finance Reform in the United States and Canada

Author’s Note

Author’s Note One of the perils of writing an academic work about contemporary politics is the risk that a book starts to become out of date the moment it appears in print. In both the United States and Canada, campaign ‹nance law is very much in turmoil. Canada’s prorogation crisis of late 2008 added an unexpected twist late in the writing of this book, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision was handed down the day before I had expected to submit my ‹nal draft of the manuscript. I have incorporated these two events in the book as best I could, but both will continue to have profound and perhaps unanticipated effects on interest group activity in the next few years. I encourage readers to consult the book’s Web site at www.press.umich.edu for my thoughts on how interest groups’ election strategies have changed since the book went to press. Throughout this book, I use the term campaign ‹nance in referring to the receipts and expenditures of both American and Canadian politicians. This is a concession to American readers; the more common term in the Canadian literature is party ‹nance. Students of comparative political ‹nancing have noted that the United States is among the few nations where most political spending is directed toward campaigns and have argued that party ‹nance is a more accurate term insofar as much of the money raised by candidates and parties in Canada and other Western democracies is used for purposes other than election campaigns (see, e.g., Nassmacher 2009). While such observations make sense, I have retained the use of campaign ‹nance simply because it will be more familiar to most readers. Similarly, I use the term interest groups in reference to both American and Canadian organizations; I avoid the Canadian term third parties because it has different connotations within American politics. Finally, I do not convert Canadian spending amounts in this book into American dollars or vice versa. For readers wishing to make direct com- parisons, the annual average exchange rates of relevance to this book, as provided by the Bank of Canada, are: 2000: $1.00 US = $1.49 CDN 2002: $1.00 US = $1.57 CDN 2004: $1.00 US = $1.30 CDN 2006: $1.00 US = $1.13 CDN 2008: $1.00 US = $1.07 CDN (Source: Bank of Canada, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/ exchange_avg_pdf.html) xii | Author’s Note ...