PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

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A parliament that is accountable I 105 concern that elected representatives might become collectively more accountable to powerful donors than to their electorates. As we have already seen, political parties, for all the low esteem in which they are held in most countries, play a vital role in parliamentary and political life. To achieve any influence over public policy, citizens and parliamentarians have to combine with like-minded others, rather than act as isolated individuals. Political parties provide the essential ‘glue’ which holds the political process together. They alone can offer the electorate alternative policy and legislative programmes which stand some chance of being enacted, or of being coherently criticised and opposed. Voters know that, by voting for a candidate of a given party, he or she will broadly support the party’s programme and leadership if elected to office. It is only through the predictability which parties thus provide that the electorate can have any collective influence over the composition and programme of a parliament. Given their essential role, it is a matter of public interest that political parties should be financed adequately and accountably to carry out their work of campaigning, organisation and education. Two decades or so ago very little was known about the financing of political parties, and they were treated as private associations like any other, accountable only to themselves. It is only more recently that concerns about their financing have become a public issue, and that its relevance to electoral competition and parliamentary accountability has been recognised as critical. We now have two large comparative studies available which provide up-to-date evidence on party financing across the globe, and offer suggestions for legislative improvement. These are the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) Handbook, Funding of Political Parties and Electoral Campaigns, ed. Reginald Austin and Maja Tjernstrom, Stockholm, 2003; and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) study of party financing in 22 developing countries, Money in Politics, by Denise Baer and Shari Bryan, Washington DC, 2005. Together these studies provide some pointers to good practice, though much is acknowledged to depend upon the specific country context. Concerns about party financing mentioned by both studies focus on the following three problem areas: ■ inadequate resources. This problem is particularly acute in developing countries, where finance from party membership dues is minuscule, and candidates often have to finance their campaign expenses from personal sources. ‘More than four out of five respondents state that they supply the
106 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY majority of funds for their campaigns, often at the risk of personal bankruptcy….As a result, many resort to relationships with individual donors who expect preferential treatment once the candidate is elected, or worse, many reformers choose not to run at all, leaving the field to candidates who are independently wealthy.’ (NDI, p.4) ■ unequal resources. The electoral playing field can be distorted by inequalities of wealth in society which are differentially accessible to competing parties. Another distortion occurs where governing parties are able to use government resources, facilities and patronage improperly to gain advantage over opposition parties. ‘Only governing parties are in a position to award contracts, grant other favours or divert state funds illegally to themselves.’ (IDEA, p.28) ■ compromising sources. Campaign money from powerful interests may be given in expectation of legislative or other benefits which frustrate the democratic process or undermine public confidence in the integrity of government. As the IDEA study puts it succinctly, ‘The issue at stake is whether interested money should be allowed to override equal voting rights.’ (p.8) It should be evident from the above list of concerns that the issue of party and campaign financing touches on a number of the features of a democratic parliament treated in this book: on the fairness of the electoral process, and its capacity to produce a parliament that is politically representative of the electorate; on parliament’s social representativeness through the role of personal wealth in access to candidacy; above all, on the degree of parliament’s accountability to the electorate. Addressing the concerns How are these concerns being addressed? The two studies mentioned both agree that strategies vary enormously according to the individual country context, and that no single model of good practice is universally applicable. Yet they also suggest certain guidelines for party financing: a mix of legislative strategies – regulation, subvention, transparency – is preferable to reliance on any one; pluralism of sources of financing should be encouraged; legislation has to be effectively enforced, preferably by a single agency; finally, no system will ever be completely watertight, since the flow of money is like the flow of water. ‘No obstacle set up for control purposes will stop trickles from flowing and siphons from being applied.’ (IDEA, p.13). The NDI study contains extensive interviews with those involved, which show how legislation can be evaded in practice, reinforcing this scepticism.
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strengthening of both legislative a
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3. Technology assessment. This has
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Australia Austria Belarus Belgium B
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Organization’s programmes aimed a
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MS. MARTA LAGOS CRUZ-COKE Executive
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MS. DULCE MARIA SAURI RIANCHO Membe
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types of, 8, 15-17, 69 voter partic
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