[OpenSpending] Fwd: [Sunlight International] Regulating Money in Politics a Global Shortcoming

Mon Jul 29 15:57:24 UTC 2013

Hi all,

Cross posting this great write up from Julia on the global state of
campaign finance:
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/07/29/regulating-money-in-politics-a-global-shortcoming/

@Ronny: Do you have any updates on the development of EU party financing
transparency?
http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/2013/06/trilogue-transparency-european-political-parties/

Best,
Anders

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Julia Keserű <jkeseru at sunlightfoundation.com>
Date: 29 July 2013 11:28
Subject: [Sunlight International] Regulating Money in Politics a Global
Shortcoming
To: "sunlight-international at googlegroups.com" <
sunlight-international at googlegroups.com>, "open-government at lists.okfn.org" <
open-government at lists.okfn.org>, ogp-civil-society at googlegroups.com,
pmo-network at googlegroups.com

(Sorry for cross-posting.)

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/07/29/regulating-money-in-politics-a-global-shortcoming/

Regulating Money in Politics a Global
Shortcoming<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/07/29/regulating-money-in-politics-a-global-shortcoming/>
by Júlia Keseru <http://sunlightfoundation.com/people/jkeseru/>July 29,
2013, 11:11 a.m.
Open government advocates around the world (including Sunlight) are
thrilled to see how more and more governments commit themselves to
openness. Unfortunately, a vital piece of the transparency agenda--party
and campaign funding--remain depressingly opaque. Because the financing
behind how candidates and parties come to power influence later policy and
spending decisions, it is critical that countries address political finance
transparency. Sunlight is committed to create a strong base for reform by
combining our efforts with other activists and sharing our expertise in a
meaningful way.

*Political finance opacity throughout the world *

Recent scandals around illegal party funding practices in
Spain<http://www.euronews.com/2013/01/31/spain-s-el-pais-prints-popular-party-s-secret-accounts/>
or
the turmoil in Brazil<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/22/us-brazil-politics-corruption-idUSBRE96L0MS20130722>
have
again highlighted the irony, controversy and - pardon our language -
obvious hypocrisy behind the new tide of government
transparency<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/>.
The fact that decision-makers still don’t seem to associate party and
campaign funding transparency with government openness is utterly
depressing, though not at all surprising.

It is no use arguing against the fact that future politicians *do* need
some sort of funding to be able to run for public office and political
parties *cannot* operate without financial resources. But trying to
convince decision-makers that voters, watchdog organizations, journalists
and (oh yes!) oversight bodies must have easy and timely access to granular
information about party and election funding seems equally challenging to
explaining the advantages of not watching television to a 6-year old.

As a result, political financing has been repeatedly rated as the “weakest
component of countries’ anti-corruption framework” since international
organizations and institutions (such as Transparency International, Global
Integrity, IDEA or GRECO, the European anti-corruption monitoring body)
began tracking the performance of national public integrity systems. If you
want to get goosebumps (no, not the nice ones), take a look at our
map<https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?q=select+col2%3E%3E1+from+1EpNSfSSF7gYTzL2K8jDkZtGZHUOYgpC0iOS28AY&viz=MAP&h=false&lat=22.987727913536983&lng=-1.40625&t=1&z=3&l=col2%3E%3E1&y=2&tmplt=2>
that
visualizes the political finance transparency scores of 31 countries from
Global Integrity’s extensive research on anti-corruption mechanisms and the
integrity of national institutions. For more details or similarly
disappointing country scores from previous years see GI's full
research<http://www.globalintegrity.org/report>
.

*Global Integrity Scorecards on Political Finance Transparency, 2011
(Covering 31 countries)*

****

*Party and Campaign Funding Trends*

And Global Integrity is not the only strict critic here. According to an
analysis based on the most recently updated IDEA
database<http://www.idea.int/publications/political-finance-regulations/index.cfm>
that
catalogues political finance laws from around the world, only “53% of the
countries require reporting from both parties and candidates” and in more
than 25% of the states that do so, “there is no requirement for this
information to be made available to the public”. And in the age of rapid
technological development, online reporting is not on the radar of even the
most progressive countries. But when it comes to the level of citizen's
trust in reporting and oversight mechanisms, aka practice, that's when the
picture gets the worst.

Transparency Intrernational
research<http://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/pub/2012_regional_policy_paper_2_political_party_integrity_more_accountable_mor>
on
the National Integrity Systems (NIS) of 25 European countries* *demonstrates
how political parties in even European countries "suffer from the lowest
levels of integrity registered among all national institutions and sectors.
Such high levels of perceived corruption can be linked to the increasingly
negative influence that unregulated party and campaign financing have had
on countries’ political processes and decisions." In other words,
regardless of how simple or sophisticated their political financing
regulations are, countries around the world are equally failing to
effectively regulate undue influence in decision-making and while being
quite apt at priding themselves on every single dataset they release, looks
like politicians do not consider political funding as ripe for reform. How
can we tell?

*Hardly Any OGP Commitments Around Party and Election Funding *

We had a look at the OGP commitments and out of the 48 countries with delivered
commitments to the Open Government
Partnership<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries>,
only 6 (!) had a hint at regulating the flow of money into politics. This
does not necessarily mean that other non-OGP states cannot undergo
important changes but the trend is obvious. And honestly there's no reason
to believe that countries without working freedom of information
legislation or a strong culture of accountability would be eager to
introduce radical transparency laws.

If we put aside our inherent skepticism for a second we might also assume
that some of the national action plans at the OGP simply forget to mention
ongoing reform initiatives around political finance transparency. However
there's enough evidence to believe that besides Albania, Croatia, Georgia,
Latvia, the Netherlands and the Ukraine, no other national governments have
anything to say (or do) about their more or less broken party and election
funding systems.

*High Time for Reform*

Is there a way out? It will definitely be a painfully slow process leading
our politicians out of the trap of systematic corruption which is in many
cases essential for their survival. Still, we believe that the rising tide
of government transparency creates an important opportunity to push for
better disclosure norms and laws in political funding. The financial crisis
already evoked a never-before-seen level of citizen outrage and demand for
more transparency generally. With proactive disclosure of public interest
information becoming a default, why should party and campaign funding be an
exception? The rapid development and increased use of technology can create
global momentum for political finance transparency reforms in a way that
has been impossible before, and yes, this is indeed the perfect time to
start pushing together for better systems.

In the upcoming months, we want to map the social, political and
technological landscape of political finance transparency around the world,
with a special focus on disclosure trends. Sunlight is planning to collect
and blog more about the best practices on technology-based monitoring tools
and we also have a handful of good examples on how to use technology and
crowd sourcing methods in environments where access to data is very
limited. Ultimately we want to combine our efforts with other activists and
advocates throughout the world, and help shape the way the public accesses
information about how elections are paid for and how parties are financed.
Stay tuned for our upcoming posts!

-- 
Júlia Keserű
International Program Coordinator

1818 N Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
(1) 202-742-1520 *280

[image: Sunlight Foundation] <http://sunlightfoundation.com/> [image:
Sunlight Foundation on
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Foundation on YouTube] <http://www.youtube.com/sunlightfoundation>
<http://sunlightfoundation.com/feeds/latest/>

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