Campaign Finance Oversight in Comparative Perspective: France and the United States

This discussion of Evaluating Campaign Finance Oversight: An Assessment of the Federal Election Commission is orginazed by LIEPP Evaluation of Democracy research group in partnership with thhe University of Arkansas.

Abstract

Money in politics is one of the most contentious fault lines in contemporary democratic governance. How much should private interests be allowed to shape electoral competition? And who, precisely, is empowered to draw that line? This half-day workshop brings together scholars to examine campaign finance regulation through a comparative lens, setting the American Federal Election Commission (FEC) in dialogue with France’s Commission Nationale des Comptes de Campagne et des Financements Politiques (CNCCFP).

The two systems could hardly look more different. France imposes strict spending ceilings, bans corporate donations to candidates, and entrusts oversight to a relatively streamlined administrative body. The United States, shaped by a First Amendment jurisprudence that treats campaign spending as protected speech—culminating in Citizens United (2010)—operates in a far more permissive legal environment, with a multi member commission deliberately structured for partisan balance. Yet despite these structural contrasts, both systems share a striking common feature: the regulators’ mandate is consistently described as inadequate to the task of meaningful enforcement. 

Karen Sebold’s Evaluating Campaign Finance Oversight offers a rigorous assessment of the FEC’s institutional design, enforcement capacity, and structural constraints. Her work raises questions that resonate far beyond the American context: What happens when an oversight body is designed, whether intentionally or not, to be weak? Can procedural legitimacy substitute for substantive enforcement? And how do political actors exploit the gaps between the letter of the law and its application?

This workshop will use Sebold’s analysis as a springboard for a broader comparative conversation. We will ask whether the dysfunctions of the FEC reflect pathologies specific to the American regulatory tradition, or whether they point to a more fundamental tension between electoral competition and independent oversight—one that French institutions have resolved differently, but perhaps no more definitively.

Speaker

Karen Sebold is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas. She currently has a book under contract with Kansas University Press, titled: Loose Laws, Partisan Politics, and a Gridlocked Federal Election Commission. She has published several articles and books in her various areas of research in International Organizations, Politique Americaine, and PS: Political Science, and White House Studies. She has taught in the Political Science department at the University of Arkansas since 2011.

Discussants

• Julia Cagé, Associate Professor of Economics at Sciences Po
• Martial Foucault, Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po
• Romain Rambaud, Professor of Public Law at University Grenoble Alpes
• Clara Sebastiani, PhD candidate in American Studies at University Paris Cité
• Sofia Wickberg, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam / Affiliate at Sciences Po LIEPP

Organizers

• Elisa Chelle, Professor of Political Science at University Paris Nanterre and Affiliate Researcher to Sciences Po (LIEPP)
• Patrick Le Lidec, Research Professor at Sciences Po and Co-chair of the Evaluation of Democracy Research group (LIEPP)
• Lou Safra, Assistant Professor at Sciences Po and Co-chair of the Evaluation of Democracy Research group (LIEPP)