Foreign contributions are frequently of decisive importance, though they are usually unpublicised. This entry will, first, set out some of the ambiguities in the term 'foreign'; second, it will distinguish between different kinds of foreign money; third, it will survey the arguments against and in favour of foreign donations.
Ambiguities of the Term 'Foreign'
In today's world, the terms 'domestic' and 'foreign' are much less clear in practice than in theory.
(1) There are many groups of workers who live temporarily in a foreign country while they remain citizens of their home country. These 'guest workers' are to be distinguished from ethnic diasporas of those who have changed their citizens and have immigrated on a permanent basis into a new country. Those living temporarily abroad frequently retain the right to vote in their home country. Their political contributions - though made from abroad - should arguably not be classified as 'foreign' contributions. Indeed, regulations concerning the funding of election campaigns in the United States permit donations from organisations of citizens living overseas such 'Democrats Abroad' and 'Republicans Abroad', even though donations from foreigners are banned.
However, the distinction between citizens living temporarily abroad and those who have emigrated on a permanent basis is not always clear. For instance, there are millions of 'guest workers' in countries such as Germany who have lived in their new country for many years and, in some cases, have even been born there. Nevertheless they have not been granted citizenship by the new country and are thus in a limbo as far as their civic rights and obligations are concerned.
(2) The introduction of elections for the European Parliament has also broken down the distinction between 'home' and 'abroad'. Citizens of any member country of the European Union are permitted to vote and to put themselves forward as candidates throughout the European Union and not merely in their own countries. It therefore becomes unclear whether, for example, a contribution by a Greek businessman to a British political party is or is not to be considered as 'foreign'.
(3) In the special case of Britain, citizens of Ireland resident in Britain as well as citizens of Commonwealth countries are permitted to vote and to participate in British elections. Again, the question arises as to whether a contribution to a British party from the Commonwealth is 'foreign'.
(4) The existence of multinational corporations, whose accounts and business dealings straddle a large number of nations, makes it hard to identify 'foreign' and 'domestic' money.
Donations from Ethnic Diasporas
The mass migrations of the last two centuries have led to the formation of communities that, though economically integrated into their new countries, retain an interest in the politics of the 'Old Country'. Indeed, migrants are often more passionate and hold more extreme opinions about political conflicts in their former homelands than those who have continued to live there.
For example, the political and paramilitary organisations of Irish nationalists have for generations relied largely on funds collected within Irish communities in the United States. Political parties within Israel maintain close connections and permanent organisations within major Jewish communities in several countries. Diasporas of Poles, Albanians, Slovakians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Croatians, etc., have all been significant at various times.
The role of funding from the diaspora is particularly important when emigrants live in countries where living standards are markedly higher than in the Mother Country. In these conditions, financial support from emigrants can be crucial.
Contributions from Foreign Business Interests
Politicians regularly receive political payments from foreign business interests. Whether the initiative generally comes from the foreign corporations or from local politicians is a matter of argument. Companies seeking oil franchises or other major contracts often argue that they are obliged by greedy politicians to give huge bribes and political donations. The opposite view is that they are only too willing to act as agents of political corruption.
Whoever is to blame, the fact remains that huge bribes from abroad have all too often been given and received. Unusually detailed evidence about international political payments emerged during the 1970s amid revelations and investigations in the United States Congress about the activities of the Lockheed Corporation. Top politicians in Japan were shown to have accepted illegal payments. Further examples of political contributions from foreign corporations came to light involving Italian politicians. More recently, the Bofors scandal has rocked Indian politics. In Britain, the Conservative Government was accused in the early 1990s of collecting political contributions from Greek and Hong Kong billionaires. Revelations about German business donations to Spanish politicians surfaced in the course of the notorious Flick Affair that followed revelations in the early 1980s in Der Spiegel.
Contributions from Foreign Criminal Syndicates
See Illegal Financing.
Contributions from Alike Political Parties
See Funding of Party Overseas Activities.
Ideological 'families' of political parties (and trade unions) have sometimes collected money for the benefit of sister parties in foreign countries. This assistance has sometimes been given through the Party Internationals (such as the Socialist International). The Swedish Social Democrats have been well-known for their activities involving international solidarity, especially with Social Democrat parties in emerging democracies.
However, the amounts of money collected by parties from their members for international solidarity has usually been small.
Secret Money Provided By Foreign Governments
Governments have traditionally used secret service funds to bribe (or, putting it differently, to assist) prominent foreign politicians and their election campaigns. Other political uses of secret service funds have included payments to foreign trade unions and to foreign newspapers.
Such payments have a long history. In modern times, the 'Reptile Fund' used by the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, provided a precedent followed by subsequent German regimes. During the First World War, the German Foreign Ministry encouraged the Bolsheviks by sending them money through devious routes across the Baltic. Hitler used similar techniques. After the Second World War and at least until the 1970s, a secret 'Chancellor Fund' was at the disposal of successive West German Chancellors. Secret payments to Chilean politicians in the 1960s and to Portuguese and Spanish anti-Communists in the 1970s reportedly came from this source.
As revelations following the fall of the Soviet regime have shown, the Soviet Union provided regular funds to foreign Communist parties and to pro-Communists organisations.
Soon after its formation in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States also became active in making payments to anti-Communist politicians, parties, and trade unions in a large number of foreign countries. In the era of the Cold War, political parties in Africa and elsewhere reportedly received financial support from the Soviet Union and from China as well as from the United States. Some oil-rich countries such as Libya are also alleged to have been active in providing money for foreign political causes. This list is doubtless incomplete, see Foreign Contributions.
Foreign Money From Democracy-Building Organisations
See also Funding of Party Overseas Activities.
Political foundations such as the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, Britain's Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the German Stiftungen receive money from their home governments for distribution abroad. This modern method of political aid aims to differ from the Cold War techniques of clandestine political funding through intelligence agencies. The three distinctive features of the methods used by these foundations are as follows.
1. The grants they make are (with the partial exception of those given by the German Stiftungen) publicly listed. They make no secret of their activities.
2. They are organised in a way that is intended to ensure that decisions about which organisations to assist are made by independent committees acting at arms-length from the donor government.
3. Some of the democracy-building foundations allocated money to several political parties in the donor country. These parties may, in turn, choose to aid several rival parties in the recipient country. In this way, the donor country does not aim to manipulate election results in the recipient country; instead, its object is to assist a system of competitive politics. For instance, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy gave grants at the same time in the early 1990s to three British parties to enable them to assist three different and opposing parties within Albania.
Trends in Foreign Funding of Parties and Elections
Though foreign political funding is a shady and controversial area of activity about which there has been too little research, enough is known to prove its significance. However, it should not be assumed that the activities that have been most scrutinised - such as those of the CIA - have necessarily been the most important. Nor should it be assumed that patterns of activity that were common during the Cold War are the same as those of today.
One reasonable surmise is that intelligence agencies have become somewhat less active in providing campaign funds to their foreign friends while the roles of corporations and of criminal syndicates have become relatively more important.
Dangers of Foreign Contributions
There are objections of principle as well as of practice against foreign contributions to domestic politics. The objection of principle is that national sovereignty demands that the political process in each state should be autonomous. It is no more legitimate for foreign citizens to pay money to support a political candidate than it is for them to have the right to vote for him. 'Political aid', according to this view, is likely to become a form of neo-colonialism. Revelations about the manipulative activities of the intelligence agencies of the great powers or (often more important) of neighbouring regimes demonstrate how serious these dangers have been in the past.
The practical objections to foreign financial assistance are as follows.
1. It is hard to introduce rules that assure the accountability of overseas donations. Whereas a government can oblige domestic corporations to declare their political payments and to impose penalties if they fail to do so, the task of bringing foreign corporations (or individuals) to account is far harder.
2. The search for foreign donations may distort relations within the party receiving aid from abroad. Politicians with good foreign contacts may win office on the basis of their overseas fund-raising abilities even if they have a small local base. Battles over control of foreign largesse have the tendency to cause quarrels, jealousies, and splits.
3. A ready source of foreign funding may lead the recipient party to live beyond its means and to be lazy about seeking money from local sources.
4. Foreign funding is fickle. The priorities of foreign political aid organisations change from year to year. A period of generous assistance may come to a sudden end and leave a party high and dry.
Arguments in Favour of Foreign Contributions
First, political contributions from foreign sources do not always have a subversive intent. Sometimes, they are also motivated by a desire to help to establish democracy in a country with a poor record of civil rights. Foreign assistance to political parties may be likened to foreign help for indigenous human rights groups. During a time of transition to democracy, there are likely to be no established party organisations. Help from abroad - albeit on a temporary basis - may therefore play a positive role in helping new parties to build themselves from scratch.
Second, financial assistance from overseas is often the only way to create a semblance of fairness between government and opposition parties. This is demonstrated by the examples of Poland and Chile in the late 1980s. In Poland, the independent trade union, Solidarity, and the independent press could not match the resources available to the military regime without equipment (such as computers and printers) and supplies of newsprint from foreign supporters.
Draft Only
