Abstract
AbstractThis article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties. It focuses on 28 parties in the five major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain), analysing the parties’ budgets from 2002 to 2016. The article's assessment shows that the availability of funds increased until the beginning of the Great Recession (2008), and then decreased, mainly due to a decline in public support for parties. Diminished state generosity has led parties to look for different sources of financing: the article shows the proportion of self-funding resources in terms of membership fees and private donations that has sustained the parties’ finances. Finally the article presents a model that helps to explain the shrinking of parties’ income by including parties’ ideological alignment, electoral outcome, presence in government and share of public financing, and countries’ public spending and GDP level, to investigate the plausible causes of the reduction of parties’ income.
Highlights
This article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties
Richard Katz and Peter Mair’s (1992) Data Handbook on Party Organizations represents a point of reference in the studies in this field, for the wealth of information collected and standardized for the first time, and for the theoretical considerations concerning the impact on political parties of the growing flow of money
The data presented in Katz and Mair’s Handbook have been recently updated by the Political Party Data Base project (PPDB), directed by Susan Scarrow, Paul Webb and Thomas Poguntke (2017)
Summary
The importance of party financing for intra-party dynamics and parties’ relations has been analysed following different lines of research, but all focused on how the abundant flow of money from the state has reduced recruitment and mobilization capacity by the parties themselves, enforcing a higher level of dependence on the state (see, among others, van Biezen and Rashkova 2014; Detterbeck 2008; Piccio and van Biezen 2018; Scarrow 2006; Scarrow et al 2017). This value, in line with what was reported by van Biezen and Kopecký (2017: 87) for the early 2010s, is increased by the German parties’ figures because more than 25% of their budget comes from this source; this high value reflects the incentive to enrol members and increase self-financing, to meet the legal requirement for the maximum allotment of public subsidies. UK Labour, on the other hand, in very recent years increased the contributions of the membership spectacularly, up to 30% of its budget thanks to skyrocketing numbers propelled by a tough competition for leadership and a reduced fee (Figure 4c) These data support the interpretation that organizational traditions still play a part as leftist parties seem to emphasize the traditional role of membership for party financing whereas moderate conservatives appear less dependent on this source of income.
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