A Comparison of Governmental Political Party Funding In Three Countries

Countries: The United States, Great Britain and France

Financing political party electoral campaigns has long been a subject of discussion and, as significantly, of controversy. Given the seminal role played by political parties in identifying, developing, and presenting candidates for electoral office at the local, regional and national levels in democratic countries, and further given the regulatory and oversight role of government in holding and vetting elections and their results, many countries have moved to create a role for government itself in providing some part of the financial resources needed for such activities (Pinto-Duschinsky and Postnikov 1). The issue is of special significance in the view of analysts such as Veronique Pujas and Martin Rhodes (41) in light of seemingly ongoing political scandals centered on campaign finance - scandals that have led some governments to take rigorous steps to reduce the potential for illegal campaign finance activities while simultaneously reducing the dependence of political parties and candidates on private finance sources.

Indeed, Pujas and Rhodes (42) argue that governments in many different countries recognize that political parties have a vested interest in raising funds for electoral campaigns and, more significantly, are likely to use legal loopholes to obtain needed funds when possible. Consequently, some governments are turning increas

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the second round $21 million. A ban on political advertising on commercial hoardings commences four months before the official campaign opens. Restrictions have also been placed on the funding of political parties: first, stringent ceilings were imposed on the resources parties may hold, together with an obligation to declare funds provided by businesses, industrial groups and private donors, subsequently all funding of political parties by businesses became illegal. The state reimburses a proportion of campaign expenses depending on the results obtained in the election $180,000 for any presidential candidate, plus 8% of the spending limit for these candidates and 36% for those winning more than 5% of the votes in the first ballot). These provisions are designed to make politics fairer by limiting expenditure and waste and guaranteeing a degree of equity between the candidates (3). Motivating the shift to public campaign finance were a series of high profile corruption scandals in the 1980s and 1990s which resulted in over eight laws in seven years which profoundly transformed the regime regulating party finance (Clift and Fisher 677). These laws were developed to target corrupt campaign finance practices and to create
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 8085
Approximate Pages = 32 (250 words per page)

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