The case for singling out the state parties rests on La Raja and Rauch’s belief that these organizations are “important nodes of the political equivalent of civil society,” capable of creating “social capital by building connections, trust, and cooperation across diverse individuals and groups.”
This is a strong claim.
It seems entirely fair to say that state parties have an important role in the electoral process—one ever harder for them to play—and that they should be spared overregulation in the age of Super PACs and freed to compete for influence and impact. Altogether different is the argument that, with regulatory relief and tax breaks, the state parties will surge into a leading role and promote “a better balanced, more effective, and more accountable political system.” Maybe so but not for sure, and a reform program that distributes special benefits to any organizations or interests, including state parties, would have to rest on more certainty about the effects.
The question raised by this analysis is whether the reform that La Raja and Rauch argued for needs to be based on more than the evidence that the costs manifestly exceed the benefits.