This handbook provides a general description of the different models of political finance regulations and analyses the relationship between party funding and effective democracy. The most important part of the book is an extensive matrix on political finance laws and regulations for about 100 countries. Public funding regulations, ceilings on campaign expenditure, bans on foreign donations and enforcing an agency are some of the issues covered in the study. Includes regional studies and discusses how political funding can affect women and men differently, and the delicate issue of monitoring, control and enforcement of political finance laws.

This book explores the problems associated with regulating the funding of political parties and election campaigns in a timely assessment of a topic of great political controversy. From interest in Obama's capacity to raise vast sums of money, to scandals that have rocked UK and Australian governments, party funding is a global issue, reflected in this text with case studies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States. Taking an interdisciplinary approach with leading scholars from politics, geography and law, this text addresses key themes: contributions, spending controls, the role of broadcasters and special interests, and the role of the state in funding political parties. With regulatory measures apparently unable to change the behaviour of parties, why have existing laws failed to satisfy the demands for reform, and what kind of laws are necessary to change the way political parties behave? The Funding of Political Parties: Where Now? brings fresh comparative material to inform this topical and intractable debate, and assesses the wider implications of continuing problems in political funding. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, political theory, policy and law.

The recent debate on the role of money in politics has shed the light on the challenges of political finance regulations. What are the risks associated with the funding of political parties and election campaigns? Why are existing regulatory models still insufficient to tackle those risks?

On cover & title page: Integrated project "Making democratic institutions work"

Scrutinizing a relatively new field of study, the Handbook of Political Party Funding assesses the basic assumptions underlying the research, presenting an unequalled variety of case studies from diverse political finance systems.

Despite any evidence against it, political parties still represent the most important collective actor in a democratic political system. Their role in representing pluralism and their electoral centrality is not undermined, even when it is strongly questioned. As long as political parties can be understood as representative actors articulating political demands, this book focuses on the capacity of Italian political parties to mobilize resources and financial resources in particular. Through the analysis of private financial donations to political parties, a neglected source of information that will be fundamental in the near future, the author assesses their connective capability with specific interests’ representatives in the last decades in order to provide evidence of their changing representational role as collective actors.

An illuminating perspective on the polarizing effects of campaign finance reform