Concepts of Equality in British Election Financing Reform Proposals

Abstract

This article discusses the ways in which the ambiguous concept of equality has been used in the British debate regarding the financing of political election campaigns. It identifies three concepts of equality commonly used in that debate: 'equality of arms' between political parties, 'equality of influence' between citizens, and 'equality of access' to the so-called 'marketplace of ideas'. The article than discusses each of these concepts of equality in greater detail, and, in doing so, identifies four broader principles underlying the use of these concepts in the election financing debate. The article concludes that, although the language of equality is used often and with great effect in the election financing debate, the concepts of equality being invoked are rarely independently valuable concepts. Instead, the concepts of equality used are valued in the election financing debate because they promote one of the four underlying principles. These principles themselves, however, involve complex questions of democracy and distributional fairness, and are not uncontroversial. I thus suggest that future debates regarding election financing could be enhanced by a more direct discussion of the merits of these underlying principles. The appropriate financing of election campaigns has been a matter of debate in the United Kingdom for at least 100 years. Scandals involving large private donations to political parties intensified modem calls for reform. Responding to these concerns, Parliament enacted the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (hereafter Political Parties Act). During the debate surrounding passage of the Political Parties Act, advocates of reform frequently grounded their arguments in a perceived need for greater 'equality' in the election financing system. Equality, however, is a complex concept.' People seldom agree on what constitutes equality, or on how to best achieve it. Not surprisingly, the ambiguity of the concept of equality is as prevalent in the election financing debate as it is in other areas in which the concept is invoked. In this paper, I attempt to identify and clarify the concept of equality, or more accurately a set of concepts of equality, commonly invoked by advocates of election financing reform. I identify three such equality concepts: 'equality of * Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky College of Law. My thanks to Professor Paul Craig and Dan Lorentz for their helpful comments and suggestions, and to Professor Gordon Baldwin, for the years he has dedicated to making all of his students better lawyers and better people. Errors are of course my own. 1 See, for example, I. Berlin, 'Equality' in H. Hardy (ed.) Concepts and Categories: philosophical essays (The Hogarth Press, London, 1978); R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1977); J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999). @ 2002 Oxford University Press This content downloaded from 207.46.13.57 on Mon, 08 Aug 2016 04:27:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 254 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 22 arms'; 'equality of influence'; and 'equality of access'. After discussing each of these concepts, I conclude that the value of each of them to the election financing debate actually depends on the acceptance of at least one of four broader principles: that political equality requires the state to show equal respect and concern for each of its citizens; that wealth in society should be equitably distributed; that representative democracy should constitute a deliberative search for a greater public good rather than a struggle between self-interested entities; or that democratic self-governance requires public access to the widest possible variety of information. The concepts of equality used in the election financing debate support these principles, but are rarely invoked independently of them. Equality, then, is used in the election financing debate not for its own sake but because it advances one or more of these underlying principles. These principles, several of which are quite controversial, involve important and complex issues about our expectations of society, citizenship and democracy. I do not attempt to evaluate each of these principles here. I do, however, suggest that the election financing debate would be enhanced if advocates of reform avoided arguing for change in the vague language of equality' and instead concentrated on articulating and defending these underlying principles. This paper has three parts. Part 1 provides a context for discussing the most recent reform proposals by briefly outlining the history of Britain's election financing laws. Part 2 analyses the way different concepts of equality have been used by advocates of reform. Part 3 introduces the notion of independent and dependent principles, and examines, in light of this notion, the relationship of the three concepts of equality used in the election financing debate to the four principles identified above. 1. British Election Financing Law