My book Bankrupting Democracy: Campaign Spending in a Marketplace of Ideas (University Press of Kansas) explores the relationship between campaign finance reform and the organizational structures of interest groups producing political ads in elections from 1976-2020.
Thinking about what a marketplace of ideas looks like has been far from static. In the book I look at how the belief in the existence of a “marketplace of ideas” shapes legislative decisions about regulation. Different ideas about who can participate, how they can participate, and what can be done to promote/hinder involvement have changed regularly.
My book tracks the different ways legislators and the Supreme Court have viewed what a healthy marketplace of ideas actually looks like in presidential elections, eventually resulting in a model designed to favor corporate interests, not candidates or the public.