暗金政治:慈善基金会如何塑造当代美国保守主义观念体系

Dark Money Politics: How Did Philanthropic Foundations Shape the Idea System of Contemporary American Conservativism

本文探讨的核心问题为:看似与政治无关的慈善基金会是通过什么样的机制塑造当代美国保守主义观念体系,并进而影响美国政治走向的。在对金钱政治的传统研究中,金钱参与政治活动一般是寻求直接影响政治结果,比如选举或者政策游说。但我们在对美国慈善基金会的研究中发现,实际上存在一些社会行为体,他们不寻求直接影响政治结果,而是用观念作为金钱影响政治的过滤层,通过影响观念和知识生产的方式来影响政治结果,我们把这种类型的金钱政治称为"暗金政治"。在诸多参与"暗金政治"的行为体中,美国私人慈善基金会最具备经济资本与社会资本的复合优势,在过去一个世纪内以"观念有机化"和"精英社会化"两种机制对美国的内政外交施加了广泛的影响。在培育新自由主义(经济)、公共选择理论(政治)和法律经济学(法律)这三种观念的过程中,慈善基金会对当代美国保守主义的政治观念影响甚巨,凸显了它战略性地用私人财富来影响美国公共政策的政治属性。

The core issue discussed in this article is:How can philanthropic foundations,seemingly distanced from political action,succeed in shaping contemporary American conservative ideas,and therefore influence the direction of American politics.In previous studies on the politics of money,money participates in political activities with clear goals to directly influence political results,such as elections or policy lobbying.However,in our research on American philanthropic foundations,we found that there are actually some social actors that do not seek to influence political results directly,but choose to influence politics by shaping ideas and the process of knowledge production.We call this type of money politics as"dark money politics."Among many actors involved in"dark money politics,"private philanthropic foundations in the United States have the most compound advantages of economic capital and social capital.In the past century,they use two mechanisms of"idea organicism"and"elite socialization"to influence domestic and foreign affairs of the United States.In the process of cultivating the three concepts:neoliberalism(economics),public choice theory(politics)and law and economics(law),philanthropic foundations have greatly shaped contemporary American conservative ideas,which shows its strategic scrutiny by using private wealth to influence American public policy.