There was an interesting new post on the subject written by “San Francisco journalist” Bill Snyder and published at the Stanford Graduate School of Business of Stanford University. Take a look at this excerpt:

Understanding the influence of corporate money in politics means looking beyond the obvious channels that have been studied by political scientists, said Bertrand. Expenditures on federal lobbying alone, for instance, are several orders of magnitude bigger than the amount corporations spend on political action committees, she said.

Lobbying expenditures are reportable, but there are legal ways that corporate spending can be used to exert influence without being traced.

The revolving door between the public and private sectors is a tool to gain influence, she said: “Given the discrepancies between the compensation you can get in the public sector versus the private sector, you can get [politicians] to do the thing that you want if there’s a promise of a job in the private sector.”

Video discussion included in the article:

Also, visit the main Democracy Chronicles section on American Democracy or our articles on Money Politics and Worldwide Corruption.