ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a general theory of campaign-finance behavior and focuses on what this theory tells about the distribution of money in campaign-finance systems. It discusses the impact that the setting of the behavior has on the behavior itself. The chapter explores a general principle of campaign-finance behavior that seems to explain a lot of campaign-finance activity, whatever the setting. It also discusses how some of the characteristics in each category affect different forms of campaign-finance behavior. Political characteristics also influence campaign-finance behavior indirectly by affecting some of the legal characteristics in campaign-finance systems. Electoral characteristics are the aspects of electoral contests that can vary from one contest to the next within the same campaign-finance system. Since they vary within campaign-finance systems, these are the characteristics that have received the most attention in the extant literature on campaign-finance. The amount of power incumbents hold in the system influences the distribution of campaign money.
