Political Finance Laws Research Articles

Is My Foreign Yours? The Concept of Foreignness in the Regulation of Political Finance

ABSTRACTDebates over ‘foreign’ political influence focus on the regulatory ‘why’ and ‘how’. This masks deeper questions about ‘who’ is foreign. Is foreignness a factor of where money is housed or its owner’s status? What of permanent residents and citizens abroad? This article unearths the debate in two stages. First, it analyses ‘foreignness’ as a general socio-legal concept linked to xenophobic wariness of, or outright aversion to others. Yet in modern liberal legal orders, outright discrimination is not an acceptable method or motivation for regulation. Instead, three distinctive, underlying conceptions of foreignness are identified within liberal legalism: jurisdiction, political community, and material interconnectedness. Application across five anglophone democracies shows that political finance law in each of those countries embodies aspects of every conception. Given they are distinguishable, this suggests not only that regulation in this area is still evolving normatively but, more importantly, that ‘foreignness’ is a rich conception not easily captured in a single definition. Revealingly, although foreignness is logically a nested and symmetric idea, regulation rarely touches influence between federal regions or actions of local corporations abroad.

Less Money, Fewer Donations: The Impact of New South Wales Political Finance Laws on Private Funding of Political Parties

AbstractThe role of money in politics has been a concern internationally with strong calls for stricter regulation of such funds. In Australia, this has resulted in a shift from laissez‐faire to increased regulation. Yet, there has been little research into the impact of this shift. To address this gap, this article examines the impact of four New South Wales political finance laws enacted from 2008 to 2012, which reflect the emergent regulatory approach. Focusing on the total number and value of political donations made to New South Wales political parties, it assesses the effects of the four Acts individually, as well as their overall impact, to test the assumption of legal effectiveness. It finds strong support for two key expectations resulting from the assumption: first, the raft of legislation will reduce the total number and value of political donations to the parties and second, that the 2010 legislation, which imposed caps on political donations and election spending, and substantially increased public funding, would be the most significant of the four Acts in terms of impact due to its scope and depth.

Political Finance Law in Queensland

Democratic politics needs resources, including money. But money tends to corrode democratic politics. These two truths are in tension; regulation is needed to reduce that tension. Besides the reality that parties need resources, small scale private donations are a form of political association. Larger pools of money can also be a way for ideological or other interest groups to practically exercise freedom of expression.

Donation and Spending Limits in Political Finance Law and their Compatibility with the AustralianConstitution

Events of 2014, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland, have sharpened focus on the relation between money and politics, with calls for increased regulation of donations to, and expenditure by, political parties. This is despite the existence of other features of our political system seeking to limit corruption, like disclosure laws, anti-corruption bodies, independent media, and Australia's standing as one of the least corrupt countries. This paper considers whether caps on political donations and limits on election spending are consistent with the Australian Constitution. The High Court has found that document requires freedom of political communication. This is subject to laws passed to further a legitimate objective, where their impact on the freedom is proportionate to a legitimate objective. Here, likely justifications for such restrictions are the need to reduce corruption and to create a level playing field. This article challenges both arguments, suggesting such restrictions are constitutionally invalid.

Political Financing in Africa: A Comparative Study of Kenya and Nigeria: Proposal for Reform

The linkage between money and polities is a powerful one with implications for democracy, especially in new democracies. Political finance has been identified as a source of political corruption in several countries. Political finance laws and regulations, through which political parties and candidates for office declare their funding sources, are among the main instruments. The relationships between party financing and corruption are so significant that to ignore party funding is simply to open wide the donor for corruption. Looking into Nigerian and Kenyan political history one realizes that there is much that need to be done in this regard. This is why the financing of political life is both a necessity and a problem. The frequency with which new laws concerning campaign and party finance are enacted is testimony to the failure of many existing legal frameworks and legislations. For instance, the Electoral Acts of 2002, 2006 and 2010, the Election Campaign Financing Bill 2012, the Public Collections Act 1960 review the current status of campaign and political finance regulations in Nigeria and Kenya. The cover among other issues: the regulation, management, expenditure and accountability of election campaign funds during election and referendum campaigns. This is because hardly a month goes by without a new scandal involving political money breaking out in some in this part of the globe. Political parties constitute one of the core groups of institutions in Kenya and Nigeria’s democratic systems. The parties that emerged in Nigeria for instance, since Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, however, are characterized by undemocratic practices and exhibited gross misconducts against transparency and accountability. At their best, political parties should nurture and articulate the expression of socio-political interest and opinion. Under current Nigerian conditions, however, most political parties lack ideologies, not issue oriented, but are merely zero-issue alliances of notables who are able to control and, often enough, manipulate party structures, candidacies and even the general electoral process itself. Most parties are vehicles in the hands of few “political entrepreneurs” who invest huge amount of money and expect concurrent rewards on such investment (in the form of public works and procurement contracts, prebendal appointments of cronies to public offices and other forms of prebendal activity). The fallout has led to mass electoral/political violence and political destabilization and disempowerment of the generality of the Nigerian electors, the exclusion of alternative parties seeking to participate in electoral politics and the absence of an effective system to regulate political finance. This paper seeks to explore the concept of political finance. It will equally attempt to concisely analyze the extant legal framework regulating political finance in Kenya and Nigeria, highlight their inadequacies with a view of reforming these inadequacies for a better political finance management and best practices and proffer suggestions on the ways forward drawing freely from the instructive practices of other emerging and advanced democracies.

Continuing Questions in Canadian Political Finance Law: Third Parties and Small Political Parties

Canadian political finance law has struggled with the question of how to treat small political parties and third parties. The author contends that data gathered by Elections Canada concerning third party expenditures over the last four federal elections provides an opportunity to re-evaluate Harper v. Canada (A.G.), which was decided without a strong evidential foundation on the grounds of a reasonable apprehension of harm. The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Longley v. Canada (A.G.) upholding Canada Elections Act provisions that require political parties to meet vote thresholds to qualify for annual allowances, raises constitutional questions about the role of small political parties. The author questions whether a distinction should be made in law between large and small political parties and whether the fear that third parties may become political parties is a sufficient justification to limit the rights of small political parties.

Political Disclosure Regulation in Australia: Lackadaisical Law

POLITICAL FINANCE LAW in Australia consists of just two pillars of regulation. There is the carrot of public funding; and there is the obligation—it is hardly a stick—of disclosure. Both pillars offer some modest civilizing benefits to the jungle of unfettered electoral competition and money politics. Disclosure lets a little sunshine in, in the hope of better informing electoral choices and deterring some undue influence. Public funding levels the playing field a little, given that the major parties attract the major donations. (“Major parties” here refers to the duopolistic parties of government, i.e., the ALP or Australian Labor Party, and the conservative coalition of Liberal and National Parties. Their dominance is virtually guaranteed by a majoritarian electoral system.) Public funding also may relieve some of the desperation that otherwise leads politicians and fund-raisers to let their thirst for finance trump their ethical sense. In this article I will argue that disclosure law in Australia drifts lackadaisically, in a laissezfaire culture. It is laissez-faire in two regards. First, the legal framework allows for unbridled campaign expenditure and donations unlimited in source or size, while the courts defer to parliament in electoral law matters. Second, there is a cultural lack—among political actors, those responsible for enforcement, the media, and the electorate at large—that combines to ensure disclosure is neither transparent nor a first order issue. The article proceeds in several stages. In the second section, I situate the Australian constitutional and political systems in relation to their two chief influences, the United States and Britain, noting the trend to import features of electoral politics from the former more so than from the latter. This section is partly to aid readers unfamiliar with the Australian landscape: others may skip to the third section. But it is also to set up a contrast between the relatively unregulated nature of political finances that prevails in Australia as opposed to other English speaking democracies. The third section gives a broad overview of campaign finance law in Australia. The essential features of the disclosure regime are then described at the head of the fourth section, prior to a discussion of some of the more egregious difficulties with the regime and the relatively weak enforcement mechanisms. A case study of the “cash-for-visa” imbroglio of 2003–04 is used as an illustration of the desuetude of disclosure in Australia. The article finishes with reflections on the cultural factors that help explain the laissezfaire approach to political finance regulation in Associate Professor, University of Queensland Law School (from 2007); formerly Associate Professor, Griffith Law School, Brisbane, Australia. The author is indebted to Daniel Lowenstein and Joseph Doherty of UCLA Law School and their Campaign Disclosure Project (sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts). He also thanks Greg Dale for his, as ever, excellent research assistance and the Socio-Legal Research Centre, Griffith University for its support. Legislation cited here is Australian: ‘(Cth)’ means Commonwealth of Australia, i.e., federal legislation. The dollar values for disclosure are as recently increased by the Electoral Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2006 (Cth).

Campaign Finance Laws and Political Efficacy: Evidence from the States

The decline of political efficacy and trust in the United States is often linked to the rise of money in politics. Both the courts and reform advocates justify restrictions on campaign donations and spending as necessary for the improvement of links between the government and the governed. We conduct the first test of whether campaign finance laws actually influence how citizens view their government by exploiting the variation in campaign finance regulations both across and within states during the last half of the 20th century. Our analysis reveals no large positive effects of campaign finance laws on political efficacy. Public disclosure laws and limits on contributions from organizations are in some cases associated with modest increases in efficacy, but public financing is associated with a similarly modest decrease in efficacy. ∗Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and 2003 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. We thank Barry Burden, Dick Niemi, the editors, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Thanks also to Matt Jacobsmeier and Matt Stiffler for research assistance. †Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Harkness Hall, Rochester, NY 146270146; 585-273-4779; david.primo@rochester.edu; Fax: 585-271-1616 ‡Department of Economics and Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri, 118 Professional Building, Columbia, MO 65211; 573-882-5572; milyoj@missouri.edu; Fax: 573-882-2697

Electoral Mechanisms and Electioneering Incentives

Why do politicians act in some countries as individual entrepreneurs, seeking a personal vote, and in others as team players soliciting a collective, party vote? This paper argues that different forms of electoral organization are determined by how electoral mechanisms, campaigning regulations and political finance laws structure the career prospects of politicians, as well as the logistical costs they face in communicating with voters.