by Herbert E. Alexander

About the author: Herbert E. Alexander is a political science professor at the University of Southern California and is the director of the Citizens’ Research Foundation in Los Angeles.

Political action committees, better known as PACs, are the most visible and controversial manifestation of the campaign finance reforms of the 1970s.

Today, a vast array of groups attain a measure of political activism at the federal level through their PACs. While the individual voter is seldom powerful enough to present a particular viewpoint before the government and the public, an association of many individual voters usually will be heard and may be respected. PACs act as an institutionalized outreach by providing a process to gather contributions systematically through groups of like-minded persons for whom issues are a unifying element in their...