Session 1: “Causes of Changes in Campaign Finance Regulations”

• Diana Dwyre, “Campaign Finance Deregulation in the US: Considerations of Privacy, Transparency, Corruption, and Accountability”
• Justin Fisher, “Britain’s Stop-Go Approach to Party Finance Reform”

Discussant: Michael Koß

ABSTRACTS

Campaign Finance Deregulation in the US: Considerations of Privacy, Transparency, Corruption and Accountability
Diana Dwyre, California State University, Chico, USA

In recent years, there has been a rather sharp deregulatory shift in the rules governing campaign finance activities in the U.S. after decades of increasing regulation of fundraising, spending, and disclosure. This shift has come mostly from the courts and the Federal Election Commission, the agency responsible for most federal campaign finance regulation and enforcement. Congress has not responded with laws to counter or refine these deregulatory actions, in part because of a lack of bipartisan agreement on how to address some of the more controversial developments. How have these recent deregulatory changes altered the campaign finance regulatory landscape, and how have they affected the behavior and relative financial influence of various political actors that participate in campaign fundraising and spending?

I focus specifically on the rise in the amount of outside spending in recent elections and the increase in the amount of anonymous spending from organizations that are not required to disclose the source of their donations. I examine the effects of these activities on parties and candidates in particular, as the only electoral players that appear on the ballot and can be subject to direct accountability by voters. These changes and their consequences lead to some important questions about the structure and normative basis of a campaign finance regulatory system. For example, is the source of campaign spending important information for voters to have, or is it none of our business? And does it matter if candidates’ messages are diminished in the face of so many other messages, many from individuals and groups that are not subject to the fundraising limits faced by candidates and their parties? I address these and other questions in the context of the current regulatory landscape as well as a political environment in which there appears to be little chance that elected representatives will address these changes that have been based on the constitutional interpretations of unelected officials.

Britain’s Stop-Go Approach to Party Finance Reform
Justin Fisher, University of Brunel, UK

Until 2000, British political finance was subject to a remarkable lack of regulation, with the principal piece of legislation having originally been passed in the nineteenth century. Since then there have been two pieces of legislation, which have changed the regulatory landscape considerably. However, the ‘problem’ of British party finance refuses to go away. Far from the 2000 legislation solving the ‘problem’, there have been three major enquiries, the two most recent of which have recommended significant further reform. The result is that Britain has developed a stop-go approach to reform, whereby reviews are entered into with reforming zeal only for the ensuing proposals to be shelved by a failure of the main political parties to reach agreement reflecting the predictions of Scarrow’s electoral economy model much more than those of Katz and Mair’s cartel model. This paper therefore assesses the extent to which the ‘problems’ of British party finance remain and considers whether it is likely that any further reform will be introduced in the medium term.

Session 2: “The Future of Public Financing”

• Michael Koß, “Slow Convergence or no Change at all? The development of West European Party Funding Regimes, 2002–2012”
• Ingrid van Biezen and Daniela R. Piccio, “Searching for Evidence of the Cartel: Are Public Funding Regimes Exclusionary?

Discussant: Iain McMenamim

ABSTRACTS

Slow Convergence or no Change at all? The development of West European Party Funding Regimes, 2002–2012Michael Koß, University of Munich, Germany

This paper reviews my earlier observation that we are witnessing a convergence of party funding regimes, which I assumed to be increasingly characterized by more regulation, (relatively) more state funding to political parties, and less large donations, especially from corporate donors. This convergence claim is at odds with the workshop’s basic assumption and hence in need of further elaboration. To provide such an elaborations, the paper aims to trace back the development of four West European party funding regimes over the last decade. Traditionally, these four regimes remarkably differed from each other: in Sweden, parties primarily drew their income from public sources), in Germany, income was generated both from private and public sources, in Britain, parties primarily drew their income from private sources, and, finally, in France, where neither private nor public sources played a significant role but parties rather relied on clandestine funding via corrupt exchanges. The paper argues that party funding regimes can be explained by three independent variables: the institutional context within which parties operate, their strategic goals, and the public discourse on political corruption. As the former two were (with the notable exception of Sweden, which will be discussed by the paper) stable over the last decade, emphasis will be put on analyzing the public discourse on party funding. This task will be carried out in a qualitative process tracing based on newspaper sources (each one conservative and one progressive quality newspaper per county) aiming to reveal the perception of dominant problems in party funding and reform initiatives. Against this background, the paper will assess whether a convergence of party funding regimes is observable. In doing so, the paper additionally takes into consideration functional equivalents for direct state funding to political parties such as ‘party taxes’ from MPs’ and office-holders’ salaries as well as public funding for party groups and foundations affiliated to political parties.

Searching for Evidence of the Cartel: Are Public Funding Regimes Exclusionary?

Ingrid van Biezen and Daniela R. Piccio, Leiden University, The Netherlands

The public funding of parties is usually justified on the grounds of its potential to promote fair competition, to level the playing field between party competitors, to insulate parties from the pressures of wealthy donors, and to enhance the political parties’ financial transparency. International governmental and non-governmental organizations tend to agree that states should financially support political parties because they provide an indispensible and fundamental contribution to the maintenance of a healthy and effective democracy. The impact of public funding on the democratic process, however, is not unequivocally positive. As the cartel thesis advanced by Katz and Mair (1995), points out, public subsidies are one of the key resources that established political parties can use in order to keep new and challenger parties from gaining access to political power.

Thus far, the search for corroboration of this aspect of the cartel thesis has tended to concentrate on examining the impact of public funding on various aspects of the party system. However, the effects of public subsidies on party competition and party fragmentation prove difficult to separate from other institutional and non-institutional factors, such as electoral rules or changes in public opinion. In this light, we argue that a more profitable strategy to search for evidence supporting the cartel argument consists of focusing on the actual regulations that comprise the different funding regimes, rather than on their intended and unintended consequences for the party system. Drawing on longitudinal data gathered for both Western and Eastern Europe, this paper focuses on the development of those legal rules which have the greatest potential to exclude new and smaller political parties from the political system, i.e. the eligibility threshold for public funding, the mechanisms for the allocation of public money, and the timing of reimbursement of election campaigns (before or after elections). Following the cartel party thesis we should expect the development of a party finance legislation to favour the established political elites and disadvantages the challengers.

Session 3: “Party and Group Perspectives on Deregulation”

• Iain McMenamin, “Dissensus Down Under: Changing Patterns of Political Finance Regulation in Australia”
• Lisa Young, “Election Finance Reform as Partisan Tactic: An early evaluation of the Conservative Party of Canada’s election finance reforms”
• Robert G. Boatright, “Campaign Finance Law and Functional Differentiation among Nonparty Organizations in the United States”

Discussant: Diana Dwyre

ABSTRACTS

Dissensus Down Under: Changing Patterns of Political Finance Regulation in Australia Iain McMenamin, Dublin City University, Ireland

Australia has a left-right party system. Both the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Liberal Party have access to pragmatic financing from the business sector. However, the Liberals also receive significant ideologically-motivated funding from Australian business that make up for the funds the ALP receive from labour unions. Over the last thirty years, Australian political finance in general, and the regulation of business funding in particular, has tracked the partisan composition of government. The introduction of disclosure and an ideological lurch towards the centre allowed the ALP to fundraise from business beginning in the 1990s. The Liberals later raised the threshold for disclosure, but now as the ALP has swept to power at the Commonwealth and State levels there is a movement towards a ban on corporate donations.

Election Finance Reform as Partisan Tactic: An early evaluation of the Conservative Party of Canada’s election finance reforms Lisa Young, University of Calgary, Canada

In 2004, Canada entered into what appeared to be a bold experiment in election finance reform. Federal political parties were to be weaned off their dependence on corporate and union contributions and transitioned to a steady diet of public subsidies, provided annually on a per-vote basis. A change of government caused a reversal of this policy in 2011, leaving Canada with very strict contribution laws and a phasing out of public subsidies to parties. This paper argues that the Conservative Party of Canada, which initiated these reforms, did so at least in part in an effort to gain an additional electoral advantage over its rivals, which had not proved as adept at grassroots fundraising. Examining fundraising data for all three of the major Canadian political parties, this paper will offer an early evaluation of whether this political tactic is likely to succeed, and reflect on the interplay between electoral competitiveness and fundraising capacity for Canadian parties.

Campaign Finance Law and Functional Differentiation among Nonparty Organizations in the United States Robert G. Boatright, Clark University, USA

The past two American elections have taken place in a legal context of relaxed restrictions on spending by nonparty groups, but with the limits imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 on contributions to and expenditures by political parties still in place. The result of this environment has been a movement by interest groups away from the issue-based differentiation that marked the largest advocacy groups of the 1990s to a form of functional differentiation, in which interest groups appeal to members not on the basis of what they stand for, but of what they can do. Although this change in the niches sought by groups has numerous parallels in literature on marketing and in literature on changes in political parties and political media, few analysts of American politics have discussed the consequences of this change for the role of interest groups in American political campaigns. In this paper I explore the nature of this differentiation and the consequences of it for party competition and partisan polarization.

Furthermore, I contend that it is possible to measure this differentiation by looking at de facto coordination between groups, and between groups and parties, in choosing where to spend money. It is widely held that although explicit coordination between groups and political parties or candidates is prohibited, it is generally possible to coordinate in practice without any formal agreement to do so. By exploring differences in spending by groups in congressional campaigns, it is possible to identify instances where groups have sought to draw upon their own functional expertise to complement each other’s activities.

Session 3: “What’s on the Table: Reform Proposals in the US and Elsewhere”

• Matthew Furman, “Interest Group Activity in Campaign Finance Reform in the United States”

ABSTRACT

Interest Group Activity in Campaign Finance Reform in the United States Matthew Furman, Clark University, USA

In the United States, interest groups have organized around campaign finance as an issue area since the early-1970s when organizations such as Common Cause, U.S. PIRG, and Public Citizen were formed to push for good government reforms. As campaign finance reform has risen and fallen as a salient issue in the minds of Americans over the following four decades, dozens of additional campaign finance interest groups have formed. Most recently, the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Citizen United v. FEC sparked the formation of a new generation of interest groups, many of which are pushing for reforms that ban corporate involvement in elections. My paper aims to increase our understanding of the campaign finance issue area by (1) conducting a census of involved interest groups and (2) cataloging the strategies that those interest groups use to influence government. I find that there are twenty-six interest groups that routinely focus on campaign finance reform but that many other interest groups, including the NRA, AFL-CIO, and the Chamber of Commerce, become involved in the issue area sporadically. Furthermore, I conclude that campaign finance interest groups employ a variety of influence strategies, including inside lobbying, outside lobbying, lawsuits, electioneering, and participation in the rulemaking process, in order to advance their agendas. Interest group leaders select between these strategies because the structure of the U.S. government incentivizes certain behavior.

Session 4: "What Have we Learned?"

Breakfast available