This page is a portfolio adaptation of the work described below. A link to the original appears where it is publicly available.
Overview
This research paper examines the campaign-finance system that developed after Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and uses the 2024 presidential election as a case study for understanding outside spending, party power, disclosure, and the influence of organizations operating beyond formal candidate and party structures.
Rather than treating Citizens United as an isolated court case, the project places it within the longer development of federal campaign-finance law and asks how legal rules shape the institutions through which political money flows.
Research question
How did the post-Citizens United campaign-finance system change the relationship among candidates, political parties, outside organizations, major donors, and voters, and how were those changes visible during the 2024 election cycle?
Institutional background
The project begins with the campaign-finance framework that preceded Citizens United, including the Federal Election Campaign Act, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, and earlier Supreme Court decisions such as Buckley v. Valeo.
That background provides context for the distinction between direct contributions and independent expenditures and for the later growth of Super PACs and other outside organizations.
Competing constitutional arguments
An important part of the paper is its treatment of the strongest argument in support of Citizens United.
The project examines the First Amendment rationale that political spending can constitute protected political expression and that government restrictions on independent expenditures can burden political speech. It also considers the distinction between contributions, which may be regulated more directly, and independent expenditures.
The paper then places that reasoning beside competing concerns about unequal political influence, disclosure, access, and the role of concentrated financial resources in democratic participation.
Parties, outside groups, and political power
The paper uses scholarship on campaign finance and political parties to examine how money can move outside traditional party organizations and into Super PACs, nonprofit organizations, and other independent groups.
This raises an institutional question that extends beyond total spending: who controls political messaging and organizational power when fundraising and expenditures increasingly occur outside formal party structures?
The 2024 election serves as the paper’s empirical case for exploring those relationships rather than as a standalone assessment of either presidential candidate.
Transparency and accountability
A second major theme is the distinction between legal spending and transparent spending.
The project examines disclosure requirements, independent expenditures, and the ways in which funding can pass through organizations that make the original source of political money less visible to voters.
That analysis connects campaign-finance law to broader questions of accountability, public trust, and institutional design.
Why this work matters
This project demonstrates long-form research on political institutions, constitutional law, political parties, interest groups, and campaign finance.
It also shows the ability to examine a contested institutional question through more than one framework: the paper presents the First Amendment case for protecting independent political spending while also evaluating arguments about political equality, transparency, party power, and democratic accountability.
For the portfolio, it expands the body of work into elections and political institutions without making the portfolio itself an endorsement of a candidate, party, or campaign-finance policy.
Portfolio context
Completed for POLS 311 – Political Parties and Interest Groups at American Military University in July 2025.