Funding We The People: Parties, Partisanship and Political Finance

• In Event: Campaign Finance and Democracy: Dilemmas and Solutions

Abstract

Political finance is often viewed with deep suspicion in many democracies. However the system is organised, and whether it is dominated by state funding or private donations, political finance rules are frequently regarded as a source of pathology and accompanied by demands (often unmet) for reform. But what should the new rules look like when the opportunity for political finance reform arises, and in what principles and values should they be grounded? The answer is a crucial step in crafting a more effective regulatory framework, but also an issue on which the existing scholarship provides no more than sketchy advice. This paper aims to address this gap by formulating a framework for evaluating political financing rules, drawing both on normative principles and on practical examples from a wide variety of countries. The framework is rooted in recent normative theories of parties and partisanship (e.g., Bonotti 2017; Muirhead 2014; Rosenblum 2018; White and Ypi 2016; Wolkenstein 2019), which highlight the ways in which democracy can be enhanced by the activities of parties and their supporters, and identify the conditions that enable these tasks to be performed. Our framework should be viewed as an extension of this line of theorising. It thus provides a means to evaluate political finance regulations in terms of their potential to enhance democracy through parties and partisanship. Using this framework, we can also identify the specific challenges to democracy that are posed by different political financing rules, the trade-offs involved in the design of such systems, and how these should be navigated given a country’s existing institutions and political culture.

Authors

• Matteo Bonotti, Monash University

• Zim Nwokora, Deakin University