Many political parties belong to international groups of like-minded parties, see Foreign Contributions. The main groupings are the Socialist International, the Liberal International, the International Democrat Union (an organisation of conservative parties) and the Christian Democrat International. Either through these 'Internationals' or on a more individual basis, political parties sometimes give practical aid to their foreign counterparts. This assistance may take the form of training party organisers and leaders; sometimes it involves direct financial assistance or aid-in-kind (such as the provision of newsprint, printing equipment, or even vehicles to enable party organisers in the recipient country to travel to remote areas).
Sometimes the funds for activities involving international solidarity come from ideologically-motivated party supporters in the donor country; sometimes groups of emigres in the donor country help to fund political parties and candidates in their former homelands, especially when these homelands conduct democratic elections after a period of non-democratic rule.
Nevertheless, the funds for party-to-party assistance have often come not from individuals but from the governments of the donor countries. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the new Bolshevik regime created the Communist International (Comintern) to serve as a channel for delivering money and other forms of assistance to form Communist parties in other countries. Though supposedly coming from ordinary Soviet citizens, the funds transmitted through the Comintern effectively consisted of state aid from the Soviet Union. In the 1930s, the Hitler regime used party-to-party links to export Nazism and to conduct campaigns of subversion, especially in Central Europe.
After the Second World War, party channels were again used to export political influence by both sides in the Cold War. While the Soviet Union continued to back overseas Communist parties and other sympathetic organisations (such as selected trade unions, liberation movements, and newspapers), the United States and its Allies also made frequent and large-scale payments to anti-Communist politicians and parties in countries threatened by Soviet infiltration. The party internationals appear to have served occasionally as one channel for such activities. However, the extent to which they acted as conduits for money from intelligence agencies is still a matter of uncertainty and disagreement.
From the early 1960s, the West German Government started to systematically channel a portion of its foreign assistance budget through a set of German party foundations, see Political Foundations. Each foundation was linked to (though legally independent from) a major West German political party. For example,
the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung was connected to the Christian Democrats; the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung was connected to the Social Democrats; and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung to the Free Democrats. The Stiftungen (Foundations) were almost entirely dependent on public funds. They acted as conduits for assistance to like-minded foreign political parties, trade unions, and civic groups. Frequently, their grants went to parallel foundations linked to political parties in the recipient countries. From the 1960s, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation was an important channel for assistance to centre-right parties and unions in Latin America; the Friedrich Ebert Foundation concentrated in the same period on aid to emerging Socialist regimes in the newly-independent countries of Africa.
In the early 1980s, the Congress of the United States created a National Endowment for Democracy. One of the main functions of this new body was to provide public funds for overseas activities to the two main United States political parties (albeit on a far smaller scale than those give to the West German political foundations). The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the National Republican Institute for International Affairs (NRI) were set up, with headquarters in Washington, to receive and to distribute this new source of funding. The NRI was later renamed the International Republican Institute (IRI). Like their West German counterparts, these institutes were legally independent from their parent parties, but the composition of their governing boards ensured a close connection between each party and its international institute.
In Britain, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, established in 1992, provides funding - mainly from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - for overseas democracy-building projects. Half of its funds are allocated to the political parties represented in the House of Commons. Other governments which now give public funds to their domestic political parties (or to foundations linked with these parties) for overseas political aid include Austria, Holland, and Sweden.
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