Campaign contributions, access, and government contracting

It is clear that corporations seek to use campaign contributions to gain government contracts, but despite anecdotes, whether they succeed has been largely ignored in academic studies. In this article, I discuss how campaign contributions may influence contracting and consider the relationship between the donation of campaign contributions and the receipt of government contracts for a sample of firms politically active between 1979 and 2006. The analysis shows that even after controlling for past contracts and other factors, companies that contributed more money to federal candidates subsequently received more contracts. In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of this finding for future research and for reforming the contracting process. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]