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Party Funding and Campaign Financing in International Perspective

Party Funding and Campaign Financing in International Perspective

Author: K.D. Ewing; Samuel Issacharoff
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781841135700
Published In: January 2006
Format: Hardback , 342 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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This book deals with questions of political party funding and campaign financing, issues which arouse controversy in many parts of the world. How are the central actors in the political arena supposed to gather the funds necessary to operate effectively on behalf of their chosen political ends? And, how may they spend money in furtherance of their political objectives?

The aim of this volume, the first in a new series of Columbia University/London University collaborative projects, is to explore these issues in the specific context of a number of national settings. The studies presented here show that financing questions cannot be addressed independent of the constitutional conventions of the country, the nature of the political parties in the country, and the means of access to publication and the media in any given nation.

It may be one matter in the US, where the political parties do not have a mass institutional base, to restrict contributions from any particular source to a few thousand dollars, or even to prohibit union contributions to political parties altogether. But in a country with a Labour Party built upon the union structure, that same rule would be an invitation to state assault upon a central political actor. Similarly, the high role of constitutional oversight in the United States and Canada yields surprisingly divergent results in terms of whether contributions or expenditures may be curtailed.

The national studies in this volume reveal a rich diversity in the approach to regulation in Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Quebec, the United Kingdom and the United States. The topicality of the issues considered is reflected in the fact that since the book was first mooted there have been major decisions of the US Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as an investigation and report by the Electoral Commission in the United Kingdom, all of which have a direct bearing on the legal and policy issues discussed in this book.

K.D. Ewing is Professor of Public Law, Kings College, London.
Samuel Issacharoff, formerly the Harold R Medina Professor of Procedural Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School, is currently the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law.

...the book is accessible and authoritative, providing not only valuable insights into a range of funding regimes but also fascinating discussions of the theoretical underpinnings of regulation within political systems based on the freedoms of speech and expression and judicial interpretations of the constitutionality or, otherwise, of various modes of regulation. It should provide a basic resource not only for public lawyers interested in such issues but also a wide range of others from a variety of disciplines concerned with the role of money in politics and elections...if you are interested in the issues, read this excellent book.
Ron Johnston
Parliamentary Affairs
September, 2007

…the broad commonalities of the essays-- clear descriptions of lamentable political practices, thoughtful accounts of well-intentioned attempts to remedy them, and acknowledgments of the limits of such reform attempts--will impress even the most disinterested scholar... a superior survey of contemporary struggles with issues of campaign finance in several countries.
Mark Rush
Law and Politics Book Review, Vol 16/9
September 2006

…a valuable book as it presents the major arguments of the debate.
Matt Qvortrup
Political Studies Review, Vol 5, No 2
April 2007

...draws together an international team of fine scholars, especially from member countries of the Commonwealth, such as New Zealand, Canada, and Australia...For academic lawyers and political scientists in the United States, [this] edition will be particularly useful because of its mainly non-American approach.
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky
Election Law Journal
Volume 6, Number 4, 2007