Wielding the Stick Instead of the Carrot: Labor PAC Punishment of Pro-NAFTA Democrats

Abstract

Political action committees normally use contributions as a reward or inducement for access or favorable roll-call votes. In extreme cases, how ever, PACs may reduce funding as part of a punishment strategy. The roll- call vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement in the House of Representatives provides an interesting test case for the strategy of pun ishment. Organized labor was clearly against NAFTA and threatened to reduce support to proponents of the agreement. If a punishment strategy is followed by interest groups, we would expect to find it in this case. Ordinary least squares regression is used to examine labor PAC contribu tion strategy. We find that labor followed a short-term punishment strat egy against Democratic supporters of NAFTA.