Checkbook Elections?: Political Finance in Comparative Perspective
Pippa Norris and Andrea Abel van Es
Abstract
Money in essential for electoral politics yet its use and abuse often raises problems of graft, corruption, and cronyism. To throw new light on these challenges, this book addresses three related questions: (1) What types of public policies are commonly used around the world to regulate the role of money in politics? This includes public subsidies to political parties, spending limits and donor caps, and disclosure and transparency requirements. (2) What triggers landmark reforms in political finance? (3) “What works,” what fails, and why—when countries reform regulations? To understand these ... More
Money in essential for electoral politics yet its use and abuse often raises problems of graft, corruption, and cronyism. To throw new light on these challenges, this book addresses three related questions: (1) What types of public policies are commonly used around the world to regulate the role of money in politics? This includes public subsidies to political parties, spending limits and donor caps, and disclosure and transparency requirements. (2) What triggers landmark reforms in political finance? (3) “What works,” what fails, and why—when countries reform regulations? To understand these issues, the book combines a worldwide overview, to sketch the big picture, along with presenting in-depth country case studies, to probe the underlying processes of reform within specific contexts. Since the regulation of political finance is a global challenge, the book compares a diverse range of cases, including affluent societies and long-established democracies such as Sweden, Britain, and the United States, as well as emerging economies such as Russia, South Africa, India, and Brazil.
Keywords:
political finance,
comparative politics,
electoral integrity,
campaigns and elections,
money in politics,
regulatory policies,
corruption and reform
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190603601 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190603601.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Pippa Norris, editor
McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Andrea Abel van Es, editor
Senior Research Fellow, Electoral Integrity Project, Harvard University and Sydney University
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