How well do campaign-financing systems work in non-U.S. countries?

Great Debates
1

Last year I posted this GQ thread – “How does campaign financing work in countries other than the U.S.?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=223440. Some Dopers provided valuable information on how campaigns are financed in Britain, France, Norway, Germany, etc. In all these countries – and, it appears, in most of the world’s democracies – there is some public financing and some limits on private campaign-related contributions, all for the purpose of reducing the influence of private money on the electoral process. But nobody actually said whether or not their country’s system works – whether it actually does reduce the influence of money on elections.

Last month furt posted this GD thread – “Campaign Finance Reform is a flop.” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=271914. furt’s thesis was that since the McCain-Feingold Bill was passed, some politically interested parties have gotten around it by starting the “527s” to buy advertising, nominally independently of the supported candidates’ campaign organizations. His point was that campaign-finance reform laws are like the War on Drugs – pointless because they’re not really enforceable; people who want to spend money to influence elections will always find a way.

I want to test that proposition. Maybe it’s not working here in the U.S. because we’re not doing it the right way. Maybe other countries have better systems – or maybe their systems don’t really work either. For some reason, when we debate campaign-finance reform here in the U.S., the questions of how and how successfully other countries approach the problem never seems to come up. Does anybody know more about this?

Since this is not a question with a strictly factual, non-debatable, answer, I’m posting it in GD, not GQ; but it was a close call.

N.B.: Let’s not get hijacked. The question of whether or not campaign spending is “protected political speech” under the First Amendment, which always seems to come up in when discussing campaign-finance reform, is not relevant to the topic of this thread.

2

What do you mean exactly when you ask whether it works or not? If the rules are actually enforced and respected? I think it’s the case in France, since the candidates must provide a detailled account of their campaign expenses and spending more than the limit would result in your election being cancelled. The courts in charge of overseeing this can reinclude expenses that haven’t been “forgotten” or underestimated. I vaguely remember a case where a printer vastly underbilled a canditate for its flyers, for instance.
So, advertizing on billboards, for instance, even paid for by a “friend” would be included in the campaign costs. Political advertizing on TV and radios is plainly banned, regardless of who would pay for it, except for the airtime the candidates or parties get for free (equal time for each candidate during the presidential election. A little more complicated for legislative elections).
There are issues with the financing of political parties in France, but I don’t think there are much issues with the financing of actual campaigns.

I think that if it doesn’t work in the USA, it’s probably for cultural reasons. I can think of two of them : first, the hype about “freedom of speech” would probably prevent too strict regulations from being passed as law, possibly even on constitutionnal grounds, or to be accepted by the population as legitimate. And I suppose that such very strict limitations would be necessary. Here, there’s much more emphasis on the “equality” (in this case between the canditates) than on the “liberty” (in this case freedom of speech) parts of the national motto. American people may regret that money plays such a big part in the elections, but french people would probably be outraged by a similar situation. I suspect you could even lose a significant number of votes if it appeared that you’re spending a big deal of money, especially coming from large companies or wealthy individuals.
Second, probably because deep rooted habbits and methods are difficult to change. Since implicated people, companies, candidates, parties, pressure groups, etc…aren’t accustomed to be limited, they find ways around the few existing regulations, and it isn’t perceived by them or by the population as a big deal. On the other hand, in France, the limit on the expenses during campaigns have been added quite recently, but since there was already a tradition of political campaigns being strictly regulated in various other ways, it still wasn’t really a significant change. Besides, the main parties (and marginal parties aren’t going to spend a lot of money) agreed on these rules. So why would they want to ignore something they themselves decided?

3

What I mean is, do people with money find a way of using money to influence the elections, despite the rules? Either by breaking them, or by finding a way around them (as with the 527s in the U.S.).

4

As for Germany, I’d say money does not much influence elections per se. The political influence of money plays out in other ways:

  • on a municipial level, the party donation sum that’s allowed without declaring the donor can be (and has been in some cases) sufficient to sway decisions on planning permissions etc. - on a level higher that municipial, it’s just not enough.

  • if you are a media corporation, you sway public opinion on policy/elections via your products

  • if you are a non-media corporation, you sway public opinion (on policy, mostly) by skilful PR, alone or in concert with other corporations.

One major exception is: there is a diffuse “protest”/“pro-nobody-anti-whoever-is-in-charge” vote of some 5-15 per cent around (depending on location and time) that usually is shared between a lot of marginal parties (extreme left/extreme right/extremely loony), none of which reach the 5 % barrier, so these parties don’t get seats. There have been cases of far-right parties (such as the DVU, “owned” by a rich right-wing publisher) putting a lot of money to saturating an area with publicity, which gives them a chance to mop up most of the “protest” vote and thus getting seats. It usually leads to a row of nominee-nonentities elected to a state parliament the parliamentary group of which then proceeds to self-destruct during the next few years.

5

[quick disclaimer-hijack]

The CFR is a blatant violation of the first ammendment protections of free speach.

[/quick disclaimer-hijack]

That having been said, I’ll toss my $.02 into the pot.

The ability to get money out of politics simply does not belong to the government of this country. Even if there were a way to do it (which I doubt) in other countries, it’s not possible here.

This country runs on money. Politicians need it to finance thier campaigns. Rich and poor people have it and want to help finance their campaigns. Capitalism ensures that there will always be a way for this to happen. When you pass a law blocking it, a new way to channel the money will appear: like the 527’s.

There is no real political will for this type of legislation to begin with. It sits very low on the list of issues that most Americans are concerned with. Politicians passed McCain Feingold because they wanted to protect incumbants and prevent citizens from speaking through special interest groups that they didn’t like. The law was never intended to actually stop financing of political campaigns, IMO.

6

[QUOTE=DebaserThe ability to get money out of politics simply does not belong to the government of this country. Even if there were a way to do it (which I doubt) in other countries, it’s not possible here.

This country runs on money.[/QUOTE]

What makes this country any different in that regard from Britain, France and Germany – the countries that invented modern commerce and industry?

7

I have an observation that may be somewhat tangental to the issue at hand, but I personally think it is relevant to put things in perspective. And I believe it may do something to answer the question BrainGlutton posted.

You have to realize when looking at the United States and our elections that you are indeed looking at for all intents and purposes the oldest functioning representative democracy.

The Swiss have certain objections they can make in that area, but I’m going to generalize them out of the discussion, for generalizations sake (sorry Swiss.)

In the beginning of the American democratic experiment campaigns were fairly political, despite the grave warnings of some of the Founding Fathers (warnings that from many of them were very hypocritical.)

However pretty much back to 1792 we have very “political” campaigns being conducted. Money was not in the equation so much back then, campaigns tended to be conducted via proxy, pen names in newspapers and the such.

Money would come in somewhat because some candidates ran their own newspapers, but historically speaking we really go to the 1830s/1840s before we start seeing the huge “big money” campaigns.

The Whigs probably conducted some of the most ridiculous campaign schemes during the early days of America.

Anyways money steadily increased in importance in American politics until we hit the mid 1870s and the gilded age. That’s when things explode exponentially. Money determined everything, and the people that controlled money controlled party manpower (via political machines.)

I could go through the rest of the history of elections, but I’ll not do that here.

Just suffice to say money in our campaigns had been entrenched for 60+ years long before most of the modern European democracies had really shaped themselves.

I mean, Germany, you have to look to the 1940s before you have the emergence of the modern democratic Germany.

With France, they’ve had so many rewritten constitutions it’s hard to keep track.

Anyways, the Euros know better than most the history of their own democratic systems. To generalize, most of them didn’t start to establish what I would call truly sovereign and representative democracies until at least 1900, and in some cases it was mid-century after WWII (and in some of course it was after they escaped the soviet bloc.)

In Europe you don’t really have this entrenched historical and tradtional idea of campaigns being ran by big money. In the United States, by the time even a sizable group had observed it as a “problem” it had been going on for over 125 years.

The basic problem is one you see all the time with various things, tradition dies hard. And this is a pretty solid tradition.

Furthermore, many of the very people who would be necessary in fixing campaign finance (if indeed it needs “fixed”) are politicians that benefit from it and would be unwilling to sign anything into law (the McCain-Feingold bill is an exception because it simply isn’t a bill that does much of anything for the better.)

8

I think people with lots of money have always found a way to make their influence felt.

I’m not sure campaign finance is as important in most countries as most of them don’t have a perpetual political campaign as we seem to. The amount of money required to run a campaign for national office in the US is breathtaking. The politician has to have somebody raising campaign money 100% of the time.

9

They “benefit” from the system only in the sense that they managed to get elected under it. Do you think they like having to spend their whole terms in office raising money for the next election?

10

They are much more socialist and less capitalist in nature. From my understanding, people in Europe have a much different outlook on the proper role of government than folks in the US. For instance, an American conservative outlook basically doesn’t even exist over there. Their right looks like our left. Their left is openly socialist!

IMO people in Britain, France or Germany are much more likely to be in support of the government taking a more active role in something like CFR.

11

But is that difference a cause of our private campaign-financing system – or a result of it?

12

I was more looking at it the other way. The difference is the cause of their public financing systems.

Of course, as an American conservative, I tend to assume that the default for everything is private sector ownership. If the government wants to get involved they better have a very compelling reason. However, in Europe everything leans more left. The government gets involved in a lot more things with less compelling reasons. A European might ask why not have a public financing system for campaigns, but an American would ask why have one at all.

13

Fair comment. But I’m trying to make this thread about the other countries, and about whether or not their public campaign-financing systems work as intended. Let’s hear from some more foreigners: Are there any Japanese or German or Australian or British Dopers out there who can tell us? Are you familiar with any ways in which rich people and/or corporations in your countries manage to use money to exercise influence on the electoral process out of proportion to their numbers, despite laws meant to prevent that?

14

From an article by Steven Hill, 1995 (http://www.giantleap.org/envision/campaign.htm):

All the above figures are, of course, from 1995. Does anybody know whether they are significantly out of date?

15

The ban was renewed last year in the UK, in response to the findings of the Neill Committe Report:

“As part of the Bill, the present ban on political advertising on television and radio is renewed and clarified. The Government believes, as did the Neill Committee, that this is an important plank in protecting the impartiality of broadcasting and democratic debate.” - Tessa Jowell.

16

But does the system, in your opinion, successfully achieve those ends? That’s what I’m trying to find out. When we debate the idea in the U.S., the first argument naysayers come up with (after the First Amendment thing) is, “It won’t work, it can’t work, money always finds a way to buy influence.”

17

By and large, yes. The only political influence the parties have on me is via news reports/interviews or by the newspaper/poster/leaflet/doorstepping/megaphone methods allowed here. If there is some enormous money pit which the parties or their corporate benefactors are pouring money into, it’s certainly not worth the money they’re spending unless it’s something incredibly subtle like subliminal messages or government mind-rays.

As for the political influence those corporate interests night have on politicians, there are also limits on what those parties can receive, and it must all be declared. Also, the media here are very quick to point to possible “sleaze”, to the extent that it is questionable whether or not it is really worth the money. The most famous example was that of a motor racing promoter called Bernie Ecclestone giving a large contribution to the Labour party in exchange for motor racing being exempt from a tobacco advertising ban. The ban was eventually introduced anyway - money certainly didn’t “find a way” in the long run.

18

Boy, are you lucky! That’s sure not how it works here!

From The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995), pp. 256-259: