Concluded projects
of the Institute of Conflict Research
Public funding of political parties - an instrument to curb political corruption?
| Project Management: | Univ.Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Karlhofer |
| Project Team: | DDr. Hubert Sickinger |
| Financed by: | Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB) Project number 11142 |
| Concluded in | August 2006 |
The research project explores the question, whether public funding of political parties is an effective means to mitigate political corruption. It also calls for additional rules and regulations, which might achieve the same effect.
Two introductory parts/sections of the research report deal with the problem of defining and measuring (political) corruption, and give an overview about comparative academic literature on political finance. Subsequently, the central question is investigated in detail in case studies on seven party democracies: the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria. All these case studies deal with economically developed countries with an uninterrupted democratic tradition, at least since WW2. On the other hand, these countries were selected because of their diverse traditions in terms of party systems, different levels of membership, highly different levels of public party finance as well as more or less generous salaries for members of parliament and of national governments, and because of greatly differing levels of corruption.
Obviously, there is no direct connection between the levels of public party finance and political corruption. Public party finance can be a viable way of reducing cost pressure on parties and, as a result, of reducing their susceptibility to corruption. Equally important seem to be additional elements of regulating political finance, such as rules governing the transparency of donations to parties/politicians, and sufficiently staffed independent institutions, which provide external control of party balance sheets. Structural patterns of party systems and the systems of interest intermediation also play a decisive role. Political parties which are well organized (and are able to exert control over their officials and members of parliamentary assemblies), seem to be less corrupt than factionalized parties. Neo-corporatist systems of interest intermediation are less inclined towards political corruption: “buying” of political decisions (as a form of illegitimate interest intermediation) seems to be less important for entrepreneurs, because they have institutionalized access to public decision makers by way of their interest associations. For the same reason, “buying access” seems to be less effective because of the dominant role of strong business and labor associations pursuing highly aggregated interests.
[GERMAN]
