Giving Compass' Take:

• Maggie Koerth-Baker discusses new research that quantifies the influence of money in politics, finally shedding some light on a well-known but not well-understood phenomenon. 

• How can funders work to increase transparency around money in politics? Is it appropriate for donors to have such strong political influence? 

• Learn about an effort to expose money in politics


The Affordable Care Act gave Amy McKay a chance to do something she never thought would be possible. It had nothing to do with her health care. The only pre-existing condition McKay was worried about was metaphorical, an infection colonizing the body of the federal government.

A political scientist who studies the way companies and interest groups influence policymaking, McKay was searching for an answer to a fundamental question of politics: Does money matter? Could making a donation to a politician before he’s elected buy you a favor once he’s in office? The answer seems obvious, but for decades, political scientists had struggled to find a definitive answer. McKay was part of a cadre of researchers convinced it would be possible to reach a well-supported conclusion — if you found the right data to study. In the fall of 2009, as the ACA took shape in the Senate Finance committee, she found her way in. Reams of data that no academic had gotten their hands on before was suddenly available to her. Ten years of database wrangling later, McKay published a study that experts say is probably the best evidence we have that money really does influence political decision-making.

It was a long struggle and a big achievement. It was also a whopping anticlimax. Are you shocked to find out that there’s evidence suggesting campaign donations have power in the halls of congress? I wasn’t. Nor, likely, were the 72 percent of Americans who already believe their federal political system is tainted by filthy lucre.

If anything, what’s surprising here is that we didn’t already know this for sure. Despite the topic being the subject of vigorous legal and political debate, despite the fact that most Americans believe it’s happening and see it as a problem, despite the testimony of politicians themselves, decades of research haven’t been able to conclusively prove that money buys influence. McKay’s study doesn’t even put an end to this strange lacuna in political science. She herself acknowledges that it isn’t a smoking gun. McKay took on a challenge. She succeeded. She ended up more cynical.

This is not a straightforward or uplifting story, I know. Tracing the path of rot that money eats through Congress isn’t as easy as diagnosing a fractured bone or a pneumonia-ridden lung. Instead, experience tells us the rot exists, but evidence can’t pin it down. Attempting to prove it’s real can feel futile. Failing to prove it can feel like madness. It’s more like having chronic fatigue syndrome, a disease that leaves your body wrecked while doctors argue over whether it’s all in your head. The Affordable Care Act gave McKay access to evidence that suggests money influences politics. But it also presented a new challenge: Does evidence matter when it tells us something we’d already thought was true?

Read the full article about the role of money in politics by Maggie Koerth-Baker at FiveThirtyEight.