| dc.description.abstract | An election is essential to democracy. It has a crucial role to accommodate the aspirations of the all citizens, a means to achieve the government that comes from the people, by the people, and for the people. The United States of America, one of the largest democratic countries in the world, applies the representative democracy where citizens elect representatives to represent them in the government. Candidates running for election needs campaign as a fundamental process to disseminate information about them to the voters, besides they also need money to finance it. The campaign in the United States is expensive so that it needs contributions whether from public or private sources. However, in the United States presidential election 2012, Barack Obama as the winning candidate only opted for private financing. Whereas the law tried to minimize the influence of money in election and thus prohibut the contributions from corporation and foreign nationals. However, the findings in this research show that among the highest contributors, there were multinational corporations (MNCs) that channeled their contributions through wealthy individuals and political action committees. The individuals of considered as the elite dominating the democratic society because they have more power (resources of funds, relations with candidates) than the majority of citizens. Their contributions being the major source of the campaign. Contributions from MNCs used to make sure that the candidate can communicate with the voters, creating public opinion to mobilize voters. The contributions mostly spent on as the most effective and efficient method to campaign. He was able to spread the messages to the voters, and tackled the attacking campaign from his opponent. | en_US |
