2024/05/02 by Sergiu Lipcean, Fernando Casal Bértoa · 1 voice · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Corruption and Economic Development
paper · doi:10.4337/9781803925806.ch59
openalex publication_date 2024/05/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Party funding regulation (PFR) has been primarily understood as an anti-corruption tool aimed at protecting political actors from undue corrupt influence linked to undesirable sources and amounts of party and campaign financing. Looking at the different regulatory dimensions of political financing, including direct and indirect public funding, private funding, party and electoral spending, transparency and control (oversight and enforcement), this entry analyses how these legal provisions are expected to mitigate political corruption. After examining the scholarship on the linkage between PFR design and political corruption, we conclude that the effect of regulations on deterring political corruption, in line with normative expectations, is more limited than initially theorised. Not only have donation bans/caps been found to be ineffective in combating political corruption, but also research linking public funding or spending restrictions and political corruption presents inconclusive results. Similarly, stricter transparency and control rules were found, more often than not, to have a limited impact on curbing political corruption. However, these contradictory findings may be the result of suboptimal conceptualisation and operationalisation of PFR.