Campaign
Finance is a recent and developing topic and has attracted growing attention
from regulators and electoral contestants in the last few years. As such, some
aspects of campaign finance regulation discussed in this Focus On might have to
be adjusted in order to take into account new developments, while new areas of
concern/ new components of campaign finance regulation should be addressed. The
following questions aim at considering avenues of reflection in order to
broaden the scope of this Focus On.
Alternative models of
campaign finance enforcing bodies
This
Focus On is limited to countries in which the electoral management body
(EMB) is responsible for campaign finance regulation. However, monitoring campaign
finance can be undertaken by a variety of different bodies, including a
competent supervisory body, a Court or a state financial body. Taking the EMBs
solely into consideration gives only a partial overview of the supervision
mechanisms since, according to the IDEA political finance database, only 47 %
of the countries targeted by the database have an EMB as the campaign finance
oversight body.[1] Taking
into account examples from countries in which the supervision of campaign
finance is taken on by a specialized body (such as in France or Lebanon) could
help include the topic of political party financing since those institutions
are generally tasked with the monitoring of political finance as a whole. This
would help bring specialized expertise and auditing skills. On the other hand,
including instances of campaign finance oversight carried out by Courts (such
as Tunisia or Guinea) would help demonstrate further the sanctioning process
since those judicial institutions are endowed with power to investigate
potential violations of campaign finance regulations and to impose sanctions.
Role of Civil Society Organizations in
monitoring campaign finance
Civil
society organizations (CSOs) can often play a major role in investigating
facts, exposing wrongdoing, advocating for change, highlighting flaws in the
regulatory process, identifying gaps in implementation, and proposing workable
remedies and solutions. Moreover, CSOs are sometimes in a position to monitor
campaign finance for a longer period and at a deeper level than is normally
possible for the oversight body.
Campaign
finance monitoring carried out by CSOs is a fundamental technique to achieve
governmental transparency and accountability. Is it possible to combine/ link
institutional campaign finance supervision and domestic campaign finance
monitoring carried out by CSOs? If so,
how this Focus On could address this relationship?
There is also a growing number of campaign
finance observation/ monitoring handbooks and reference materials (such as
codes of good conduct or methodology manuals) published by international
organizations or CSOs, including notably:
§ BRIDGE (Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and
Elections);
§ The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance Political Finance Database;
§ The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance Handbook on Political Finance;
§ The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
Political Finance Oversight Handbook, Training in Detection and Enforcement
(TIDE)
§ The Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions
(OSCE/ODIHR) Handbook for the Observation of Campaign Finance;
§ The reports of the Council of Europe’s Group of States
against Corruption (GRECO) including assessments on political party and
campaign finance systems in the 49 GRECO members;
§ Monitoring Election Campaign Finance A Handbook for
NGOs, Open Society Justice Initiative
(2005) - see at: http://www.soros.org/sites/default/files/Handbook_in_full.pdf;
§ CRINIS, joint project
from Transparency International and the Carter Center, http://archive.transparency.org/regional_pages/americas/crinis
§ Regional Transparency
International Initiatives, available at: http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/elections_and_anti_corruption_in_europe.
Social
media and the internet
Social
media have been extensively used by both the institutional actors (through the publication
of electronic financial report templates and the disclosure of financial
reports on internet) and the electoral contestants (through the setting up of
Facebook and Twitter accounts and the submission and the publication of their
financial reports).
→ The website of the oversight body could
be used to disseminate information on campaign finance regulation. Indeed, all
materials aimed towards candidates and political parties (handbooks, campaign
account template, FAQs, etc) should be published on the oversight body’s
website, be readily
accessible in user-friendly reports, and be available sufficiently in advance of the electoral
period.
The
oversight body could develop a single web-based portal/platform which will
allow political parties and candidates to file their campaign finance accounts
directly and electronically, if the legal framework foresees electronic
submission of financial reports. This would allow for a timely and
up-to-date publication of all relevant information related to the financing of
the campaigns. Decisions issued by the oversight body along
with financial reports lodged by electoral constants should be made public in a
timely manner to make
this information easier to interpret and to reorganize for research purposes.
→ From
the perspective of electoral contestants, the use of social media and the internet
represent an innovative way of campaigning, allowing them to reach out to a
greater number of voters more easily and at a lower cost. Most of countries do
not have specific rules governing the extensive use of social media and the
internet. This area will have to be further looked into and be dealt with in
connection with the broader issue of New Voting Technologies.
