Reducing Corporate Influence in Politics

Question

In America, at least, businesses have a good deal of influence in politics. Many policies surrounding, for example, the agricultural sector run contrary to the preferences of voters but adhere to the preferences of agrobusiness.

Assuming that the reduction of corporate influence in politics were a desirable outcome, how would one go about doing it?

The discussion of whether or not corporate influence is ultimately a good thing in politics is outside the scope of this question. This question is simply to address how one could eliminate or reduce corporate influence in the creation and enforcement of policy. Answers can be, but need not necessarily be limited to apply to the American government.

Answer 1

Repeal the 1st Amendment, or reverse the ruling of Citizens United v. FEC

It would matter what sort of influence you were interested in reducing. Corporations have little influence when it comes to direct campaign donations, since currently it illegal for corporations to donate directly to political campaigns. This leaves Political Action Committees (PACs), whose donations to political parties/multiple-candidate are a paltry sum.

$5,000 to a candidate or candidate committee for each election (primary and general elections count as separate elections);

$15,000 to a political party per year; and

$5,000 to another PAC per year. PACs may make unlimited expenditures independently of a candidate or political party

As far as how influential spending in political campaigns is, Steve Levitt, Freakinomics co-author found that:

When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.

Supposing you wanted to eliminate that %1-2% edge, you have the issue that the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission that corporations/labor unions free speech cannot be abridged by Congress if the 1st Amendment is to have any teeth.

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for engaging in political speech [...] Although the First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” §441b’s prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is an outright ban on speech, backed by criminal sanctions. It is a ban notwithstanding the fact that a PAC created by a corporation can still speak, for a PAC is a separate association from the corporation.

Repealing an amendment (like the 21st repealed the 18th) to the Constitution requires that either both houses of Congress by 2/3rds supermajority, or a constitutional convention or 2/3rds of the state legislators propose an amendment.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments [...]

Then, the amendment needs to be ratified by 2/3rds of the states

A proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 States).

The second route is trickier. Overturning Citizens United v. FEC would probably require that a new set of SCOTUS Justices. The same justices would likely rule the same way as their previous opinions. With a 5/4 split between concurring and dissenting opinions, you would need for Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Alito, or Thomas to leave the bench. SCOTUS Justices are appointed for life, so you would need either kill one or wait for for one to die.

Additionally, to bring a case to trial, you need what is called standing. You need to demonstrate to the court how you were personally harmed by the fact that a corporate PAC caused you harm. This would likely require that you would need to run for office, and show that a PACs political free speech caused you harm.

Answer 2

Smash capitalism? 30 character spacer.

Answer 3

I think this question should be divided in two parts:

• What can be done to reduce the corporate influence on election results

• What can be done to reduce the corporate influence on the government policy

While the first task can to a degree be implemented under Capitalism, the second task requires transition to Socialism as a prerequisite.

So, what can be done to reduce the corporate influence on election results? There are multiple measures that could be implemented to that end.

• First of all one has to reduce the degree to which paid advertising affects the elections. As advertising requires the party to pay money, the party becomes dependent on the donations of the business. This makes parties more reliant on the help of the business to be more represented in the media. To combat this some countries prohibit parties and politicians from accepting donations for the political campaign, and rather require the campaign funds be limited by the fixed sum provided by the state to each competitor.

• More alternatives on the elections. In the US one has to choose from only two parties. This is mostly determined by the first-past-the-post electoral system. As such the parties do not experience negative effects of criticism regarding their policy. As both party policies affected by the big business to the same degree and there is no alternative.

• A more radical measure may be a change from territorial representation to the representation by the working collectives. A system of this kind was briefly implemented in the USSR until 1936: the colleagues elected their deputies from their own ranks, knew them well and the deputies were to return to their collectives after their term expired.

Now, what can be done to reduce corporate influence on the government policy? Actually any big business can blackmail the government even if that government is not aligned with the business. The business can influence the government the following ways:

• Propose investments conditional on some policy is implemented, a law adopted or repealed, or direct financial support from the government. This may include copyright laws, security laws, property laws, ecological laws and the like, as well as tax exemptions, state guarantees, and direct financial support to the business. The government may decide the promised investments are more beneficial to the state than sticking to the previous policy.

• Threat to cease operations in case some policies not implemented. This may include for example a treat with bankruptcy in case the government does not support the enterprise. As the bankruptcy of say banks or factories may bring social discontent the government may decide to support the business with state funds.

• Threat not to supply some goods on which the government is reliant, especially if the company is foreign-based. The company can cease supplying spare parts, weapons, aircraft, power plant equipment or other high-tech production which cannot be easily replaced by another source. Alternatively a company can stop buying some materials produced by the country, such as diamonds.

• Use advertising, biased press and biased research to affect the public opinion. This most often includes controversies about ecological and quality standards, protectionism and competition. The government may be just influenced by a massive campaign in press and alleged scientific data.

Despite that most of the above is inherent to Capitalism, something still can be done:

• Outlaw lobbying and other means of direct influence on the government.

• Strictly investigate the cases of conflict of interest (i.e. when the politicians have financial or carrier interest in certain industries)

• Prohibit the deputies from participating in big business and require to declare their income and assets. This can be traced to Ancient Rome where senators were prohibited from conducting trade operations.

• Make available an option to revoke the deputy. The modern territorial election principle makes this difficult to implement. Examples when this worked includes the USSR before 1936 (when the deputies were elected by the colleagues), and England of 18th century (where some parliament members were elected by a small group of voters).

Answer 4

The only way to reduce corporate "influence" would be to eliminate a good deal of the government. The first mistake people make often is give politicians a pass, by acting like politicians were forced into this, and the second great mistake is to think they could stop the people they given nearly unlimited power to by having them write an easily avoidable law to somehow restrict themselves. When we give people control of tens of billions of dollars and power that's worth even more, we can only trust them to spend it right or not at all, in which case we shouldn't have given it to them in the first place. The solution is we need qualified and trust worthy leaders, so less lawyers and more engineers and doctors, but at the same time people have to realize no one can run, or has a track record of successively running a gigantic behemoths, like our government. Our leaders proclaimed purpose must be cutting the government down to a size they're repeatedly proven qualified to run. Only leaders proclaiming to do this could possibly considered to be trust worthy, and many incredible accomplishments of social improvement wouldn't hurt either. A crisis of unqualified and dishonest leadership is a problem in every country.

While there's nothing that could give one the experience to run such a supper sized organization, effectively, most seem to list their experience merely as worker in the same corrupt or similarly corrupt organization, otherwise known as career politician. A history of selling government power to business qualifies one to be promoted in government, therefore our standard of leadership is in the gutter.

Occupation of Congress as of 2010.
269 members (227 Representatives, two Delegates, and 40 Senators) served in state or territorial legislatures
214 members (182 Representatives and 33 Senators) list their occupation as public service/politics 225 (168 Representatives and 57 Senators) list law[19]
201 (175 Representatives and 27 Senators) list business
94 (78 Representatives and 16 Senators) list education

For more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress#Occupational_background

Answer 5

Looked at worldwide, corporations in the US have much more influence than they do in other Western democracies.Much of this reduction has been achieved through relatively simple legislation, and here are some examples:

• Tighten up the rules on what consititutes political advertizing. The rules in the US are very loose compared with other countries. For example an ad saying "Senator X has done a bad job and his policies would be bad for the country" is not technically a political advert. This means expenditure on ads like this are not subject to campaign finance rules, and is why the US has many more ads like this than other countries. Candidates essentially get round the rules by using super-pacs to run ads like this, which would be forbidden in other countries.
• The above rule would also reduce a corporations ability to link corporate donations to passage of specific bills. Corporate entities regularly tell candidates they will give money only if the candidates supports specific measures. This is borderline bribery at best, and occurs in most countries. But the ability to donate huge sums of money through superpacs makes this tactic much more effective in the US.
• Reverse the law that says "corporations are people too". This gives corporations rights they do not have in other countries. An amendment to the constitution would probably be required for this.
• Reduce the influence of lobbyists. Most countries have restrictions on those, but they are far fewer in the US.
• Implement a system forbidding circumstances where a person can go straight from a corporation to elected office, or vica versa. This creates many opportunities for corruption, and is forbidden in many countries.