Section Thématique 41 / IPSA RC 20 Meeting

Financement politique et corruption politique
Political Finance and Political Corruption

Responsables

Jonathan Mendilow (Rider University) jmendilow@rider.edu
Eric Phélippeau (Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique - ISP/CNRS Université Paris Ouest - Nanterre La Défense) eric.phelippeau@u-paris10.fr

Présentation scientifique Dates des sessions Programme Résumés Participants

Présentation scientifique

Le financement et la corruption de la vie politique restent un champ de recherche relativement récent de la science politique. Et parce qu’elles dépendent souvent de matériaux qui ne sont pas divulgués, jusqu’ici, la plupart de ces recherches ont pris la forme d’études de cas peu soucieuses de s’inscrire dans une optique propice à un effort de comparaison et de généralisation.

A l’heure actuelle pourtant, une période de transition s’est ouverte qui rend ce besoin de comparaison et de généralisation plus que jamais pressant. D’un côté, les démocraties les mieux établies se débattent avec une vie politique plus onéreuse, mais une opinion publique de moins en moins disposée à en payer le prix. De l’autre, des réseaux politico-économiques nationaux et supra-nationaux de plus en plus complexes fraient la voie à un redéploiement de la corruption et à de nouveaux arrangements ploutocratiques susceptibles de modifier la forme et le fonctionnement des systèmes démocratiques. Mais s’attaquer à ce problème soulève différentes questions. Les financements publics adoptés par les démocraties représentatives les mieux établies comme par un nombre croissant de démocraties émergentes pour tenter de juguler naguère ces problèmes ont, depuis, engendré bon nombre de critiques. Au delà des questions de principe (particulièrement vivaces aux USA) autour de l’intervention du gouvernement dans le financement des campagnes comme atteinte à la liberté d’expression, certains avancent désormais que les financements publics ne seraient plus en mesure d’atteindre leurs objectifs affichés et qu’ils se traduiraient par toute une série d’effets inattendus transformant la nature et le fonctionnement de la compétition électorale.
 
Le but scientifique de cette section thématique est d’ouvrir un forum susceptible d’enrichir notre connaissance sur ces questions de financement et de corruption politique adossées à des études de cas et à des cadrages théorique spécifiques, afin de mieux lier ces objets ainsi que les manières de les concevoir et de les étudier. Les panels proposés dans le cadre de cette section thématique peuvent à cet effet être subdivisés en trois grandes familles.
 
La première rassemble des études qui se centrent sur la corruption et le financement politique au sein d’ères spécifiques : démocraties établies, monde post-communiste, démocraties émergente comme celles du Moyen Orient. L’enjeu de ces recherches est d’appréhender les liens entre diverses transformations socio-politiques survenues au sein de ces espaces, et le financement et la corruption de la vie politique, en tentant de faire sortir ces études de cas de leur frontières restreintes et de faire germer des hypothèses de recherche transposables à d’autres environnements. Ainsi par exemple, dans la période de transition évoquée précédemment, comment évolue la transparence et la responsabilité des élites politiques aussi bien au sein de pays comme l’Autriche ou le Canada ? Quelle place tient la question de la corruption dans les élections qui se sont récemment tenues en Ukraine, ou l’impact du changement social sur l’éthique politique dans les pays du Moyen orient ?
 
Le second groupe de panels se focalise sur des expériences variées de réformes et sur leurs effets. Dans ce cadre, différents travaux cherchent à appréhender l’impact de réglementations en matière de financement de campagnes électorales sur le développement de « partis cartels » en Europe ; d’autres s’emploient à cerner l’évolution des standards internationaux en matière de financement politique ou de lutte anti-corruption au sein de pays d’Amérique latine et d’Asie. Dans un contexte international d’encadrement et de réglementation toujours plus poussé, un ensemble de travaux particulièrement stimulants concernent les réformes à rebours qui touchent les Etats-Unis : la suppression des entraves aux dépenses de campagnes consécutive à une récente décision de la Cour suprême marque effectivement un tournant dont les effets ont déjà pu se faire sentir à l’occasion des élections de 2012.
 
Le troisième type de panels est formé par un ensemble de recherches autour de concepts et de méthodes en vigueur. Ces travaux reviennent notamment sur la définition de la corruption, qui fait très souvent débat. Certains discutent des typologies existantes en matière de corruption et se proposent de les affiner. D’autres préconisent des méthodes d’investigation permettant d’appréhender ce problème aussi bien dans des pays en développement qu’au sein de pays développés. Plusieurs recherches ambitionnent enfin de revenir sur les explications avancées par des théoriciens de générations passées relativement au rôle de l’argent en politique, aux sources de la corruption et aux effets des réglementations en matière de financement politique.

Research into political finance and political corruption is among the newer fields in Political Science. Because it tends to depend on material that is usually not publicly disclosed, hitherto much of it took the form of case specific studies that focused on non-repeatable results in a manner that discourages generalizations. Yet such generalizations are precisely what are needed in the current era of transition. On the one hand, established democracies are grappling with greater costs of political competition coupled with reduced readiness of the general public to fund it. On the other, ever more intricate networks of political and economic national and cross national contacts create new opportunities for political corruption and for plutocratic arrangements that are liable to change the nature of democracy as we know it. Attempts to address the issue, in of themselves, raise questions. Thus public funding arrangements adopted by almost all the stable democracies and growing number of new and emerging democracies met with good deal of criticism. Beyond questions of principle (raised especially in the US), such as whether government intervention in campaign finance violates the principle of free speech, it was argued that public funding cannot meet its declared goals, and that it leads instead to unintended shifts in the nature and conduct of electoral competition. The aim of the RC 20 meeting is to provide a forum for the consideration of what could be learned from developments in specific settings as well as theoretical questions pertaining to the nature of political finance and political corruption, the linkage between them, and the method of studying them. The panels may be divided into three broad categories. The first focus on corruption and political finance in specific regions: developed democracies, the post-communist world, and emerging democracies such as those in the Middle East. The aim is to examine the impact of shifting realities on political finance and corruption, and to inquire how an analysis of what took place in each may serve as seedbed of hypotheses for the examination of other settings. Thus, for instance, to what degree is the period of transition referred to above impact political accountability in countries such as Austria or Canada? What part did the issue of corruption play in the elections held recently in the Ukraine, or the impact of social change on political ethics in the countries of the Middle East? The second category of panels examines the experience with various reform efforts and their impact. Included, as example, are papers on what can be learned from the impact of campaign finance regulation on the development of Cartel parties in Europe, or the evolution of political standards and political competition in countries such as Uruguay or South Korea. An especially intriguing set of question raised in this context relate to reform in the opposite direction: the removal of political financial regulations by the American Supreme Court and its impact on the elections of 2012. The third category of panel consists of research into the concepts and methods utilized in the field. Such studies address the fact that we do not have an accepted understanding of what precisely is meant by corruption, attempt to better identify the types of corruption we may encounter, and inquire how to study the phenomenon in developing and developed counties. In an effort to enrich our thinking we have added papers that seek to examine explanations offered by past generations of theorists to the role of money in politics, the sources of corruption, and the effects of regulation of political finance.

Sessions

Les travaux de la Section Thématique se dérouleront sur les horaires suivants :
- Introduction et Panels 1 à 4 : 9 juillet 2013 à partir de 9H30
- Panels 5-8 : 10 juillet 2013 à partir de 10H
- Panels 9-11 : 11 juillet 2013 à partir de 10H

Lieu : CERI (56 rue Jacob), grande salle de conférence

Programme

Introduction : Yves Deloye/Nonna Mayer, Jonathan Mendilow, Michael Pinto Duschinsky
 
Panel 1. Campaign and Party Finance Reform
Yves-Marie Doublet (French national Assembly), Standards on Party Funding of Member States of the Council of Europe
Jurij Toplak (University of Maribor), Changes in European Campaign Finance 2008-2013
María Victoria Terán (University of the Republic of Uruguay), The challenge of transparency: Political financing in Uruguay

Panel 2. Political Finance and Political Competition: Some Interrelations
Ingrid van Biezen (Leiden University), Daniela Piccio (Leiden University), Do Cartel Parties Exist? Longitudinal Data from Eastern and Western Europe
Piero Ignazi (Bologne University), Italian public financing: from an unrestrained flow of money to present reconsideration
Lou Brenez (Université libre de Bruxelles), Party financing in Russia and its impact on party organizations, The case study of Tomsk
Menachem Hofnung (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Electoral Campaign as a Saving Plan

Panel 3. Campaign Finance Regulation and its results
Michael Pinto Duschinsky, Development in the Field
Graeme Orr (University of Queensland), Ritual and Aesthetics in the Regulation of Campaign Finance
Heung Soo Sim (Gyeongsang National University and Rider University), Evolution of South Korea's Framework for Public Subsidies to Support Electoral Campaigns: Has It Lived up to Public Interests in Fair Elections?
Abel François (University of Strasbourg, LaRGE), Eric Phélippeau (University Paris Ouest, ISP), Pascal Ragouet (University Bordeaux 2, Center Emile Durkheim), The Impacts of Regulation on Campaign Financing: Evidence from the French Experience

Panel 4. Financing Elections in the USA: 2012 and Beyond
Mark Farha (School of Foreign Service, Doha), “Occupied White House”: Change and Continuity in Oligarchic US Financial Policy Under the Obama Administration
Diane Dwyre (California State University, Chico), Campaign Finance Deregulation in the US: Considerations of Privacy, Transparency, Corruption and Accountability
Robert G. Boatright (Clark University), Can Public Financing and Citizens United Coexist?

Panel 5. Political Finance and Political Corruption
Renata Treneska-Deskoska (Skopje University), Financing of Elections in Macedonia: Between the Law and Reality
M. V. Rajeev Gowda (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore), Eswaran Sridharan (University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India), Large and Small Donors, Party Expenditures in India: Implications for the Relationship between Party Finance and Corruption
Anne Marijnen (University La Rochelle), Political Finance in Italy: Collusion, Corruption and Fragmentation of the Political System

Panel 6. Corruption: Theories and Methods of Study
Frank Rusciano (Rider University), Elite and Citizen Perceptions of Corruption: The Global Corruption Barometer vs. the Transparency Index, 2003-2011
Manuel Villoria (Complutense University, Madrid) and Fernando Jaminez (University of Murcia), How to Study Corruption in Developed Countries. Some Theoretical and Methodological Questions
Rebecca Fiske (Simons-rock college), Funding Corruption: Homo Sacer and the State of Exception
Barry Seldes (Rider University), Hume, Corruption, and the USA: A Journey of a Fearful Idea

Panel 7. Corruption: Towards a Definition
José Vargas-Hernández (University of Guadalaraja), The Multiple Faces of Corruption: Typology, Forms, and Levels
Kirill Batygin (Peoples' Friendship University of Russia), Comparing Legal Definitions of Political Corruption in 6 Countries of South Eastern Asia

Panel 8. Social Change and Corruption
Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College), Corruption and the Arab Uprising: Comparing the Pre and Post Spring Situation in the Arab World
Jonathan Mendilow (Rider University), Cultural Diffusion and the Meaning of Corruption: some Notes on the Arab Spring
Robin Fiske Rusciano (Rider University), Civil Society Thinkers and Actors: Their Roles in Preventing Corruptive Structures

Panel 9. Corruption in the Communist and Post Communist World
Olga Guzhva (V. N. Karazin Kharkov National University), Corruption Issue at Election Battle of Ukranian Politics
Roman Sheyko (Kharkov institute of social research), Institutionalization of Corruption: the Regional Characteristics of Post-Soviet Countries'
Oznur Ozdamar (Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca/Italy), Good Governance, Parental Benefits and Child Health Outcomes
Jacob White (Franklin College), Corruption in China, some Preliminary Comments

Panel 10. Corruption in Developed Countries
Barbara Franz (Rider University), Austria: a Case of Endemic Corruption?
Chung-li Wu (KU Leuven), Political Corruption and Judicial Verdicts on Public-Land Litigation in Taiwan
Luc Juillet (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Ottawa), Politics in an Age of Distrust: Corruption, Ethics Regulation and the Politics of Accountability in Canada

Panel 11. What Are the Effects of Paying the Piper?
Monika K. Bil (University of Sussex), The Politics of Public Funding. The Impact of Public Funding on Political Competition in Post-1989 Polish Parties
Daniel Smilov (Center for Liberal Strategies, Sofia), Public Funding for Parties as a Subsidy for the Media
Michael Brogan ((Rider University), Energy Power: The Political Geography of Energy Sector Campaign Contributions to Federal and State Elections

Résumés des contributions 
 
María Victoria Terán, The challenge of transparency. Political financing in Uruguay.
Modern democracies must accept that the participation of political parties requires funds to operate. On the assumption that democracy and political exercise cost, among other resources, money, transparency is key money-policy relationshipWe will analyze the accountability criteria that exist in Uruguay regarding the financing of political parties, developing indicators that meet international standards in order to compare it with other countries in the region. This requires characterizing the Uruguayan case and rebuild the road that led to the approval of political finance law.The ultimate goal of the study is to analyze the criteria in Uruguay and developadequate transparency indicators standardized criteria that allow comparison with studies conducted in other countries of the continent, in order to provide transparency to the way parties are financed.
 
Yves-Marie Doublet, Standards on Party Funding of Member States of the Council of Europe

Jurij Toplak, Changes in European Campaign Finance 2008-2013
Over the past five years two international organizations systematically observed and evaluated campaign finance rules and practices in over forty European democracies. Their findinds triggered major revisions of political finance laws in most of them. This paper analyses how European campaign finance has changed over the past five years.
 
Ingrid van Biezen, Do Cartel Parties Exist ? Longitudinal data from Eastern and Western Europe.
According to conventional discourse public funding of political parties is finalized to promote fair competition, to level the playing field between party competitors, to insulate parties from pressures from wealthy donors and to enhance the political parties’ financial transparency. International governmental and non-governmental organizations are unanimous on the fact that states should support political parties as a fundamental contribution to the establishment and the maintenance of a healthy and effective democracy. The cartel party thesis notably reverses the democratic justification of public funding, pointing to public subsidies as one of the resources that the main political parties take advantage of in order to keep outsiders out from power resources.
Most of the research on party funding has searched evidence of the cartel party argument, investigating the effects of the financial support to political parties on party competition, on the number of political parties in the party system, and on party system change. Results revealed little evidence that public subsidies, alone, affect party competition. Indeed, various scholars have underlined the difficulty to insulate the effects of public subsidies on party competition, vis-à-vis other institutional and non institutional factors, such as electoral rules or changes in public opinion (Casas-Zamora 2005; Pierre et al. 2000; Scarrow 2006, 2007). In this light, we argue that a more profitable strategy to search evidence for the cartel argument in relation to the financial support of political parties is to focus on the actual regulations that are present in the different funding regimes, rather than on their effects on the party system.
Drawing on longitudinal data gathered on both Western and Eastern European countries, in this paper we focus on those rules with the greatest potential to exclude smaller and new political parties: whether subsidies are disbursed to both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties and the timing of reimbursement of election campaigns (before or after elections). Following the cartel party thesis we should expect the development of a party finance legislation which favors the established political elites and disadvantages the challengers.

Lou Brenez (Université libre de Bruxelles), Party financing in Russia and its impact on party organizations. The case study of Tomsk
How to study political party financing in Russia? What can we infer from such study concerning the impact of financing on party organizations? This communication based on my PhD thesis will focus on these two related questions.
Party financing is one important criteria of typologies used in political science to describe political parties (Duverger, 1951 ; Kirchheimer, 1966 ; Epstein, 1967 ; Katz & Mair, 1995…). Despite all the difficulties to gather data on party finance in the context of post-Soviet Russia, I argue that it is possible to learn about Russian party organizations – a topic still poorly-studied – notably through in-depth fieldwork at the local level combined with various official data (Electoral Commissions publications). Indeed, such data allow drawing hypotheses on parties’ internal organization.
From the case of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia, in Tomsk in 2008-2010, I will develop several findings: on the one side, as far as intra-party federal/local relations are concerned, the study of political financing will show the organizational differences between these three parliamentary parties. On the other side, I will concentrate on linkage between parties and society, showing that all three parties heavily depend on private companies financing while avoid searching for citizens’ contributions. Such findings allow inferring some trends concerning party developments in post-Soviet Russia.

Menachem Hofnung, Electoral Campaign as a Saving Plan
In Israel, politicians put their name in a marginal campaign for using that campaign to accumulate resources for internal party primaries for safe place in a Knesset list. The paper draws attention to such behavior and raises the possibility that it points to a strategy used in other democracies as well.
 
Michael Pinto Duschinsky, Development in the Field

Graeme Orr (University of Queensland), Ritual and Aesthetics in the Regulation of Campaign Finance
The gist of it would be that we tend to think about the issue from one or other of two instrumentalist approaches: (1) realist thinking (eg anti-corruption), or (2) liberal democratic thinking (equality, liberty, deliberation). I suggest that, without always being aware of it, we also think about and indirectly regulate campaign finance for reasons that are better understood as related to ritual and aesthetics. For instance, there is an aesthetic aversion to money in political campaigns - yet not to the use of editorial or intellectual resources in them - partly because the 'good' or 'ideal' vision of politics is centred on the expression of ideas. Or, for a second concrete example, in some systems types of campaigning (notably say broadcast advertising in the UK or Israel) are limited in part to encourage a more genuine ritual of political engagement or campaigning.  That is, bans on broadcasting are not only designed to limit the cost of campaigns in the interest of political equality or anti-corruption. The paper will thus draw on cultural and sociological norms to shed a different light on the study and understanding of electoral campaign finance and its regulation
 
Heung Soo Sim (Gyeongsang National University and Rider University), Evolution of South Korea's Framework for Public Subsidies to Support Electoral Campaigns°: Has It Lived up to Public Interests in Fair Elections°?
Korea has adopted a comprehensive legal system of public party and campaign funding in March 1994. The “Election for Public Office and Election Malpractice Prevention Law” of 1994 has since been reshaped time and over again to various needs arising from realities forged by unforeseen exigencies. It is the purpose of this essay to trace these changes and to account for them. The changes have been analyzed into two main subjective areas: 1) public finance in campaigning and 2) public management of the election processes. The former is divided into two foci: (a) ratio and range of public subvention; and (b) who’s entitled to get subvention and to what extent. The latter deals with the scope of public management of campaigning. In the analysis, our attention will be on the changes and their impact on open and fair competition in South Korea.
 
Abel François, Eric Phélippeau, Pascal Ragouet, The Impacts of Regulation on Campaign Financing: Evidence from 1995 France
The aim of this communication is to analyze how the regulation shapes the campaign financing of the candidates. To do it, we propose both theoretical and empirical study of the French case. In 1995, between the 1993 and 1997 legislative elections, the French regulation of the campaign finance considerably changes. This change contains three main evolutions. Firstly, the spending ceilings are greatly lowered. Secondly, the corporate financing is totally forbidden, which means candidates can only obtain money from themselves, from voters and from party. And thirdly, a complex mechanism of public aid is implemented that can be described as follows. The public subsidy is a reimbursement of only the spending paid by the own contributions of the candidate. The subsidies are limited to half of the spending limit. Only the candidates that overpass 5% of the votes can obtain the reimbursement.
To study the incidence of this regulation on the campaign financing we propose a two-steps approach. In a first stage, we underline the expected effects of the regulation change on the candidates’ financing. Mainly, the new mechanism of the public reimbursement has to modify the strategy of financing. The own contribution has to play a key-role in the campaign financing and has to be influenced by the new terms of the regulation. As a result, we can expect that i) the likelihood to overpass the votes threshold deeply impacts the magnitude of the part of the own contribution in the campaign financing; ii) if the condition about the votes share is met, the own contribution has to tend to half of the spending limits. In a second stage, we carry out an empirical study. This study is based on the campaign financing of the candidates running at both the 1993 and 1997 elections in order to highlight the change of financing induced by the regulation change. Especially, we study the repartition of the financing between the own contributions and the other sources and the change in the own contributions of the candidates.
 
Mark Farha, Occupied White house: Change and Continuity in Oligarchic US Financial Policy Under the Obama Administration
This paper examines how the Obama administration’s rhetoric of “believable change” has been belied by its policies in the financial realm. Far from making good on the campaign promise to exclude lobbyists and increase transparency of governmental decisions, the Obama administration has set new records in the employment of well-entrenched Wall Street insiders and veteran K Street lobbyists to key positions in financial and foreign policy as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald has noted. In part, the profligate bank bailout and window-dressing reform measures but a prolongation of policies under prior administrations. Increasingly, however, the administration finds difficulty in upholding its carefully constructed media image of renewal. Nor have the Republicans led by Bain Capital insider Mitt Romney offered a credible alternative.
By highlighting the common calls for transparency found at both ends of the political spectrum, this paper will examine how dismay with an increasingly unsustainable, corrupt status quo ante, as well continued opacity in fiscal and monetary matters, may have kindled a critique and constituency cutting across partisan lines as illustrated by the collaborative efforts of Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders to force the Federal Reserve to open its books.  While the argumentation of left and (libertarian) right may differ in the respective emphasis on regulation and a return to a truly free market, transparency and accountability have emerged as a potentially useful common objective for true financial reform of today’s still rampant, politically protected crony capitalism.
 
Diane Dwyre, Campaign Finance Deregulation in the US: Considerations of Privacy, Transparency, Corruption and Accountability
Recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the agencies that implement campaign finance law have provided a way for individuals, groups, corporations and unions to make anonymous donations to organizations that spend that money to influence elections. As a result, the amount of anonymous money in U.S. elections has increased significantly. Indeed, almost half of the nonparty spending in the 2010 elections was from unknown sources. This development raises questions about the balance of various values in the U.S. representative democracy. Do disclosure requirements violate the freedom of expression guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment? Are privacy concerns more important than transparency in campaign funding? Those who advocate for less disclosure (generally conservatives) warn that individuals, groups and corporations are potentially subject to harassment for expressing their views. Those who call for more disclosure (generally those on the left) point to an increased potential for corruption when voters are unaware of who is supporting or opposing candidates. I will examine this increase in anonymous money and consider some consequences of this development. How has this influx of anonymous money affected the balance of various campaign spenders? Are candidates and parties being outspent in some contests? Has the increase in secret money changed the way money is spent? Is more money being spent on television advertisements? Has this affected the level of competition? Is there evidence that the increase in anonymous money has influenced the policy decisions of lawmakers? I will address these and other questions in my paper.
 
Robert G. Boatright, Can Public Financing and Citizens United Coexist?
In 2003 Karl-Heinz Nassmacher asserted that once public campaign subsidies candidates are introduced into law, they are never abolished. The 2012 election showed that American public financing, while it has not been abolished, has become irrelevant.  The attractiveness of public financing to presidential candidates has been declining since the late 1990s. In 2012, no serious presidential candidate accepted public matching funds and the corresponding limits. There have been many proposals regarding how public funds might be rendered more attractive to presidential aspirants, but most proposals were developed before the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision. This decision said nothing directly about public funds, yet it arguably allowed outside groups to help candidates who have limited funds. The 2012 election yielded only two candidates who clearly exceeded the limits that would have been imposed with the receipt of matching funds.
In this paper, I ask how publicly financed candidates might fare in an environment with outside groups of the nature of 2012’s “Super PACs.” I analyze aggregate and state-by-state expenditures of the 2012 presidential candidates to measure how matching funds would have altered their campaigns, and I explore the effects revisions to the public financing system would have had. I then evaluate whether the United States is an outlier among Western democracies in its abandonment of public financing, or whether this change is a signal of broader changes in how candidates for office in Western democracies raise funds.
 
Renata Treneska-Deskoska, Financing of elections in Macedonia: between the law and reality
The electoral legislation was codified in 2006 in the Republic of Macedonia. The parliamentary elections in 2006, 2008 and 2011 showed that there were weaknesses of certain provisions of financing electoral campaigns in the Electoral code, but also that there were practices which meant violation of the rules for fear and democratic electoral competition. In 2008 the amendments of the Electoral code were adopted. But this reform has not corrected all weaknesses of the Electoral code. Even more, it seems that in one part the honest intention were missing. These days, in 2012 Electoral code is also in procedure for its amending. OBSE/ODIHR has given recommendations on the need for establishing fair rules on campaign finance, but these suggestions are again disregarded.
This paper will point to the weaknesses of the electoral rules on the financing of electoral campaigns and their implementation, as well as to the gap between the rules and the practice. The special attention will be given to the: questions of limitation of the expenses for electoral campaign, public financing and to the financing from private donations, expenses for media presentation, as well as transparency and control of the financing of electoral campaign. The paper will analyze the weaknesses of the legal rules on, as well as practice of illegal and corruptive political financing of electoral campaigns in the Republic of Macedonia.
 
M. V. Rajeev Gowda and Eswaran Sridharan, Large and Small Donors, Party Expenditures in India: Implications for the Relationship between Party Finance and Corruption
We follow up on our 2012 article on “Reforming India’s Party Funding and Election Expenditure Laws” (Election Law Journal) with an empirical examination of the roles of large (mostly corporate) and small donors in funding national and state parties in India since 2003-04. These data have recently become available through the Association of Democratic Reforms, Election Commission of India, and Right to Information Act.
The data reveals that the bulk of party income comes from small donations under Rupees 20,000. From the perspective of party financing in other robust democracies, this seems a positive development. However, in India, because small donors’ identities do not need to be disclosed, this may be a method through which parties launder unaccounted (“black”) money. The introduction of tax deductibility for corporate donations since 2003 has led to a rise in the volume of corporate donations.  We examine corporate donor behavior, including the intriguing pattern of corporations donating to parties across the spectrum. We also examine the Election Commission’s data on the nature of election expenditure and critically assess the effectiveness of India’s election expenditure limits.
This research yields insights into the relationship between political finance and corruption in India which we also examine in a comparative context. We further explore the implications of our findings for other aspects of party politics in India: 1. lack of intra-party democracy 2. control of parties by families, and 3. criminalization of politics. This research is timely given the public campaign against corruption in India since 2011. The title would be: What do candidates campaign financial accounts tell us about party organizations in France?
 
Anne Marijnen, Political finance in Italy: collusion, corruption and fragmentation of the political system
In Italy, a persistent fiction regarding the public funding of political parties tells that it has been been abolished in 1993 and replaced by a reimbursement of elections expenses. Several aspects make italian political finance singular among established democracies : the amount these reimbursements (with 18000000 € by far larger than the real expenses of the parties), the fact that they are supplemented with very high financial contribution to parliamentary groups (54 000 000 €), and by the funding of political media (80% of their operational cost). On the top of it the lack of efficient controls and sanctions, added to the absence of limit on the amount and periodicity of private contributions, is equally remarkable.
We would like to show that this regulatory framework participates in the fragmentation of political system and still allows a plutocratic access to political decision, even after the disintegration of the corrupt political system 20 years ago (tangentopoli). These considerable loopholes show a long lasting consensus among the political parties to maintain this status quo. Studying the conditions of adoption of these regulations highlights an obvious consociativism between all the political parties which cooperate for their mutual benefit. Consequently the fragmentation of the political systems appears to be the cost the main political actors are ready to pay to benefit from various funding opportunities. This massive and uncontrolled public and private funding of the political system favors a systemic political corruption which has only begun to be sanctioned by voters.
 
Frank Rusciano, Elite and Citizen Perceptions of Corruption: The Global Corruption Barometer vs. the Corruption Perceptions Index, 2003-2011
Transparency International creates two indices of global corruption annually: the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB). The former bases its ratings of corruption in various nations upon surveys primarily of elites, and includes a score and an international ranking. The latter is an international survey of citizens’ perceptions of corruption in their own countries. This paper explores the relationships between these two indices, asking the following questions: do elite and citizen perceptions of the level and ranking of corruption in their nation coincide? Where there are differences, what combination of factors can help predict elite or citizen perceptions of corruption in their nation? Finally, what is to be learned from any differences between these two indices that would help create better global measures of corruption?
 
Manuel Villoria, How to study corruption in developed countries. Some theoretical and methodological questions
One of the basic questions concerning corruption is how to study the phenomenon given the problem of  secrecy and the lack of agreement as to what actually constitutes corruption. This paper looks at a few questions that pose themselves in the context of developing countries. A special consideration is that these are often misjudged by the application of definitions and methods of study appropriate to Western states. The question then concerns both the what and the how of the study of corruption in such settings.
 
Rebecca Fiske (Simons-rock college), Funding Corruption°: Homo Sacer and the State of Exception
The Italian philosopher Georgio Agamben has written extensively about the nature of Homo Sacer, the State of Exception, and the spatial manifestations of each. He has defined the Exceptional Space as a legally sanctioned lawless space, such as a Nazi camp, wherein “every fiction of a nexus between violence and law disappears and there is nothing but a zone of anomie, in which violence without any juridical form acts.” Such a space depends upon narratives of corruption and upon the Homo Sacer. This paper will consider the bio-political nature, structure, and funding of legally defined, lawless space.
 
Barry Seldes, Finance Capital and Political Corruption Down the Ages
This paper explores changing conceptions of the supposed connections between finance capital and political corruption. Economic liberals, from Hume and Smith on, and a good deal of popular imagination, have associated finance capital and closely associated forms such as monopolies and cartels, as the major subverters of the public weal, not only distorting what otherwise would be just allocations of goods, services, and incomes, but inevitably corrupting the state by various forms of fraud, bribery, and “captures” of state agencies. Other outlooks, including Marxists, early 2oth century progressives, New Deal liberals, contemporary neo-liberals, and conservative libertarians, however, have offered mutually competing visions regarding large scale financial enterprise and political corruption.
 
José Vargas-Hernández, The multiple faces of corruption: typology, forms and levels
This paper is aimed to analyze the multiple forms and faces of corruption, its typology and levels. The analysis begins reviewing a typology categorizing political corruption, economic corruption and public administration corruption and showing some examples of typologies, establishing the levels of corruption and indicating where can be encountered. It is concluded that corruption is just as multifaceted concept as there are societies and economic and political systems, embracing from the broad concept of corruption to the narrow legal concept of bribery. However, it is difficult to assess the overall levels of corruption phenomena based on empirical or perceived data which do not reflects the realities of corruption world.
 
Kirill Batygin, Comparing legal definitions of political corruption in 6 countries of South Eastern Asia.
The principal assumption of this paper is that law systems contain what one should consider to be imperative definitions of socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Indeed, legal norms are the primary source of definitions sanctioned by the political powers of the country to describe a number of social trends. With this in mind, one might suggest that when one encounters what could be considered corrupt political practices the first objective is to assess whether or not the action in question falls under the legal description of corruption. This is the point where one frequently encounters certain variations of definition, especially on an international level. With the applicable laws of six key actors of the East Asian Region – China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea & Taiwan – serving as a starting point, the present article seeks to present examples of lawmakers attempting to differentiate corrupt political practices from the agreed upon social norm. A key aim is to show the contrasts between what is accepted to be political corruption in different countries and what actions which might be deemed corrupt (for example, by the scientific community or the mass-media) are not included within the framework of the norms. Applicable international and national (Germany, Russia, U.K., U.S.) law, as well as doctrinal definitions, are used to provide a greater context. When available, data from formal court cases is provided to show ad hoc examples of how the legal definition is upheld in real-life situations.
 
Ilan Peleg, Corruption and the Arab Uprising°: Comparing the Pre and Post Spring Situation in the Arab World
Arab regimes that were subject to the upheavals of the “Arab Spring” were accused mutatis mutandis of corruption. To what extent did this trigger constitutional and administrative reforms in the countries that had undergone regime change, or that escaped it by promising reform? To answer the question, this examines and compares the pre and post “Arab Spring” constitutions and governing institutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan.
 
Jonathan Mendilow, Cultural Diffusion and the Meaning of Corruption. Some Comments on the Arab Spring
Charges of corruption were among the powerful forces propelling the “the Arab Spring”. Curiously, however, beyond the abuse of power for personal ends there is no consensus on what the term actually means and what triggers its use. The problem is exacerbated in the case of the “Arab Spring” seeing that the differentiation between the office holder and the office is a western construct foreign to Islam. This paper seeks to clarify the possible meaning of corruption in such a setting and, if possible, to speculate as to whether the meaning could apply in Western societies as well.
 
Robin Fiske-Rusciano, Civil Society Thinkers and Actors°: Their Roles in Preventing Corruptive Structures
“Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict − alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence” (Dorothy Thompson). In a post-conflict or conflict-prone society, the creation of a community that wants to find ways of living together, making responsible decisions, in brief, doing the groundwork necessary for healing, leaders and actors must find ways to handle trauma, a culture of violence, and the corruptive structures that allowed as much. If the power-holders and the policy-makers ensure that one identity is chosen for poverty by way of no access to most jobs, last on the list for housing, resulting in seriously diminished human rights, the consequences must be seen as violence and inherently corrupt. Civil society thinkers have the obligation to meet such challenges head on, finding paths that will restore, renew or teach about spheres of peace-building.
 
Olga Guzhva (V. N. Karazin Kharkov National University), Corruption Issue at Election Battle of Ukranian Politics
No effort to prevent and detect corruption can succeed without the active involvement of civil society. The importance of civil society is reflected in section 3 of the law "On the basis of prevention and countering corruption", which lays the ground for the participation of citizens in the anti-corruption efforts. The role of media is particularly important. A free and independent media is one of the principal vehicles to inform the public about corrupt activity. By investigating and reporting on corruption, the media provides the knowledge necessary to enable citizens to hold both public and private institutions to account. A functioning, independent media can also promote effective civil society action against corruption. The impact of civil society is dependent not only on reliable information, but also on the existence of the means to disseminate its opinions and raise issues of public concern. Thus, the media plays a dual role in countering corruption: it can draw attention directly to corrupt practices through reporting and investigation, and it can disseminate information about the anticorruption efforts of other actors. In this perspective, it is important to get a better sense of the capacity of civil society − and more specifically of the media and NGOs − to contribute to government integrity.
 
Roman Sheyko (Kharkov institute of social research), Institutionalization of Corruption°: the Regional Characteristics of Post-Soviet Countries'
This article offers the author's interpretation of the corruption relations as a form of social institutions. The analysis of the institutional characteristics of corruption in the system of social norms and behavior standards is performed. The terms of the emergence and development of corrupt practices in the post-Soviet countries are described. Feature of corruption in countries such as Ukraine and Russia is that they obtain many very important social functions, gaining more and more signs of a social institution. In addition, every year in the public opinion the level of tolerance to this social phenomenon is growing. The author analyzes the existing approaches to fighting corruption and its prospect in the post-Soviet social and cultural environment.

Oznur Ozdamar, Good governance, parental benefits and child health outcomes
Using data from 20 OECD countries for the period 1984-2007, I examine the role of governance -measured by the rate of female political representation and the level of corruption- in determining the efficacy of public spending in improving child development outcomes. There is a fair amount of research on the relationship between public spending and development outcomes which finally point out that public spending does not always yield the expected improvement in development outcomes due to the variety of reasons including bad quality of governance. The fact I seek to assess empirically in my research is that public spending, governance and development outcomes are interlinked. Therefore I study the impact of maternity and parental benefits on child and infant mortality rates with broad range of controls by modeling the interaction between public spending and governance indicators in assessing this impact. After I address the endogenity problem using instruments for the relevant public spending and perform several robustness checks, my results support three basic hypothesis; a) Higher GDP lower the child mortality b) The link between maternity and parental benefits with child and infant mortality rates is not always negative but the efficacy of public spending in lowering child and infant mortality outcomes positively related with the level of good governance c) Corruption into politics negatively impacts to the development effectiveness of public spending on parental and maternity benefits.
 
Jacob White, Corruption in the People's Republic of China: some preliminary comments.
While in theory the government of the People's Republic of China and the Communist Party are completely separate entities, in practice they are fused together in many ways. The fact that only one political party has complete control over the government and all major industries enables corruption to prevail throughout the system. This paper will focus on the nature of the corruption where the lines of government and party meet, and analyze what measures are being taken to mitigate or reinforce these corrupt practices.
 
Barbara Franz, Austria: a case of Endemic Corruption?
This paper will ask the question whether political corruption is endemic in Neoliberalism or a typical feature of Central European States? To do so I will first define political corruption as a relative simple link of between political favors and monetary or economic benefits based on the exclusivity of access to and lack of accountability of the political system. Secondly, I will demonstrate that in Austria this form of political corruption has been rampant in the past decades.  Thirdly, the paper will show that curiously this form of corruption - that simply enhances the pocketbooks of politicians - is as good as absent from Scandinavian countries (I hope). And finally, the paper will draw some conclusion that link corruption to neoliberalism and show that in states where neoliberalism expanded in the 1990s one of its outgrowth became extreme profit thinking that politicians put above and beyond social responsibility and accountability
 
Chung-li Wu, Political Corruption and Judicial Verdicts on Public-Land Litigation in Taiwan.
The judicial system in Taiwan has long been entangled in political conflict and corruption. The general public does not seem to trust it as independent of political influence. This study employs public-land litigation as a litmus test to inquire whether the decisions of Taiwan’s three-tiered court system − district courts, high courts, and the Supreme Court − are politically biased. To this end, I tackle three interrelated concerns. First, I offer a description of the relationship between political factors and public-land benefits in Taiwan. I then outline the position that the judicial system might have political considerations in public-land suits and the possible factors that could affect case decisions. Finally, I present data from verdicts by the three court tiers on public-land litigation between January 2000 and December 2012; a hierarchical logistic regression model is constructed to test whether judgments on public-land cases are affected by political factors.
 
Luc Juillet, Politics in an age of distrust: Corruption, ethics regulation and the politics of accountability in Canada
While Canada remains amongst the least corrupt countries in the world, its politics has been affected by a string of ethical controversies over the last twenty years. As a result, concerns about political corruption led to significant changes in the party structure and to fundamental changes in the oversight of ethics for both legislators and ministers. In particular, a new code of conduct has been legislated and a new independent commissioner has been appointed to regulate potential conflicts of interests and investigate alleged ethical breaches. Drawing mainly from an analysis of a dozen cases investigated by the new ethics commissioner and a set of interviews conducted with Members of Parliament, the paper will show that, while the reforms had no discernible impact on corruption and public trust, they had unintended effects on legislative politics, allowing Members of Parliament to involve an independent third-party in the determination of fundamental issues of representation and accountability.
 
Monika K. Bil, The politics of public funding. The impact of public funding on political competition in post-1989 Polish parties.
Many recent discussions reveal the increasing interest in public funding as an independent variable. Whilst the evidence concerning the impact of public funding on political competition points in different directions, little is known about how the parties themselves view and assess this influence. This study of post-1989 Polish parties focuses on the insider perspective – that is, the parties’ views on the role and influence of public funding on political competition in post-communist Poland. Analysis of plenary parliamentary debates and debates in committees; interviews with party politicians; and press articles all yield insights into how parties view the influence of public funding on political competition. The paper reveals (a) how various parties viewed public funding and other public resources (b) where in parliamentary debates on public funding the parties positioned themselves vis-à-vis state institutions and Polish society, and (c) what implications various forms of public funding had on political competition as viewed by these parties.
 
Daniel Smilov, Public funding for parties as a subsidy for the media
The growing role of state money (through state subsidies for parties and budgets for advertising of different EC funded projects and others) in the crisis-ridden sector of the media creates opportunities for  favourable government coverage, especially in recently consolidated democracies. Political parties, in general, are becoming state funded in Europe. In German context this phenomenon has been called “etatization” by critics. In order to prevent big state subsidies to go directly to media outlets, many European countries limit or even ban the buying of political ads. Bulgaria has a model in which the parties are generously funded by the state, and there are no limits for buying of time for political ads. This leads to direct material interdependencies of major parties and major media outlets based on state resources. In order to have a complete picture of these interdependencies one has to add the uses of advertising budgets of state institutions (ministries and other bodies). I propose to throw some light in this area by studying the money spent by the political parties on political ads, the share of the public subsidy spent on PR and the media, as well as the policies in the area of advertising budgets of state institutions.
 
Michael Brogan, Energy Power: The Political Geography of Energy Sector Campaign Contributions to Federal and State Elections,
The paper examines spatial and inter-temporal patterns of energy sector political campaign contributions at the federal and state levels. The work unravels significant variations in contributions that indicate a coordinated strategy at the federal and state levels of government by energy sector entities (e.g. companies, individuals, PACs, etc.). The paper also analyzes how energy sector strategic influence (defined as campaign contributions at the federal and state levels) impacts levels of regulatory enforcement of environmental laws, the allocation of permits for energy exploration, and the amount of severance taxes from energy production collected. The research analyzes election contribution data at the federal and state levels from 1990-2011 from the energy sector entities to political candidate campaigns and Political Action Committees (PACs).

Participants

12ème Congrès de l’AFSP à Paris du 9 au 11 juillet 2013 à Sciences Po

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