Political Action Committees (PACs) are interest groups that are created for the sole purpose of collecting money from their members and contributing these funds to candidates and political parties.
In the U.S., for example, the creation of PACs was authorized by the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974. This Act allowed corporations, labour unions and other special interest groups to create a PAC in order to raise and spend money from their members on campaigns. The intention of the law was to clean up election financing but instead PAC spending has increased substantially and has become a major issue in Campaign Financing.
