Fordham, Rachel Funk. 2024. "Anti-Democratic Influence: The Effect of Citizens United on State Democratic Performance." Forthcoming in Legislative Studies Quarterly.

Does money in politics affect democratic performance? I study the effect of the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which struck down existing state bans on independent campaign expenditures, on democracy in the U.S. states. Results from a difference-in-differences design suggest that the Citizens United ruling did have a substantial negative effect on state democratic performance, and that this effect is largely independent of the effect of Republican party control identified by previous research. The results suggest that unlimited political spending may pose a threat to the health of democracy in the United States.

Fordham, Rachel Funk. 2022. "Automatic Voter Registration Report." Data for Progress, March 18.

Funk, Rachel. 2019. "Abusing Referenda to Consolidate and Extend Power: The Cases of Rwanda and Burundi." SSRC Items, September 10.