IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/646.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The problem with party finance : theoretical perspectives on the funding of party politics

Author

Listed:
  • Hopkin, Jonathan

Abstract

This article presents some theoretical contours for the study of party finance and its consequences. Two broad issues are explored. First, the article develops an account of changes in patterns of party finance, and in particular the move away from the ‘mass party’ model of funding towards ‘elite party’ and ‘cartel party’ models. Party finance is conceptualized as a collective action problem, and four ‘post-mass party’ financial strategies are identified. Second, the article addresses normative issues, assessing how these four financial models perform in terms of ‘liberal’ and ‘populist’ theories of democracy. It is concluded that the mass party model remains closest to the ‘democratic’ ideal, whilst the state-financed (‘cartel’) model is a reasonable pragmatic response to the decline in party membership.

Suggested Citation

  • Hopkin, Jonathan, 2004. "The problem with party finance : theoretical perspectives on the funding of party politics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 646, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:646
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/646/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ades, Alberto & Di Tella, Rafael, 1997. "National Champions and Corruption: Some Unpleasant Interventionist Arithmetic," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(443), pages 1023-1042, July.
    2. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
    3. Sunstein, Cass R., 1999. "Free Markets and Social Justice," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102734.
    4. Mueller,Dennis C., 2003. "Public Choice III," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521894753.
    5. Albert Breton & Gianluigi Galeotti & Pierre Salmon & Ronald Wintrobe, 1997. "Understanding Democracy: Economic and Political Perspectives," Post-Print hal-00445586, HAL.
    6. James M. Snyder, 1991. "On Buying Legislatures," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 93-109, July.
    7. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew Bond, 2007. "Elite Social Relations and Corporate Political Donations in Britain," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(1), pages 59-85, March.
    2. Hopkin, Jonathan & Blyth, Mark, 2018. "The global economics of European populism: growth regimes and party system change in Europe (The Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2017)," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100094, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Poire, Alejandro, 2006. "Elements for a Theory of Political Finance," Working Paper Series rwp06-014, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Nicole Bolleyer, 2009. "Inside the Cartel Party: Party Organisation in Government and Opposition," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(3), pages 559-579, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    2. Kym Anderson & Gordon Rausser & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 423-477, June.
    3. Philip Jones, 2007. "Colluding victims: A public choice analysis of international alliances," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 319-332, September.
    4. Stadelmann, David & Torrens, Gustavo, 2020. "Who is the ultimate boss of legislators: Voters, special interest groups or parties?," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224562, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Leo Wangler & Juan-Carlos Altamirano-Cabrera & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2013. "The political economy of international environmental agreements: a survey," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 387-403, September.
    6. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell M. Rhine, 2006. "On the size and growth of government," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(Jan), pages 13-30.
    7. Abbott, Andrew & Jones, Philip, 2014. "‘Leaning Against an Open Door’: Ideology and the cyclicality of public expenditure," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 957-969.
    8. Dalibor Roháč, 2009. "Je predpoklad voličskej racionality len mýtus? [Is the assumption of voters' rationality just a myth?]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2009(2), pages 163-176.
    9. Ester Silva & José Silva Costa, 2006. "Are voters rationally ignorant? An empirical study of Portuguese local elections," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 5(1), pages 31-44, May.
    10. Roger D. Congleton, 2018. "Intellectual foundations of public choice, the forest from the trees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 229-244, June.
    11. Abbott, Andrew & Cabral, René & Jones, Philip & Palacios, Roberto, 2015. "Political pressure and procyclical expenditure: An analysis of the expenditures of state governments in Mexico," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 195-206.
    12. Walter Hettich & Stanley L. Winer, 2006. "Analyzing the Interdependence of Regulation and Taxation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(4), pages 355-380, July.
    13. William Keech & Michael Munger, 2015. "The anatomy of government failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 1-42, July.
    14. Anthony Evans, 2014. "A subjectivist’s solution to the limits of public choice," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 23-44, March.
    15. J.A. den Hertog, 2010. "Review of economic theories of regulation," Working Papers 10-18, Utrecht School of Economics.
    16. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    17. Peter J. Coughlin, 2015. "Probabilistic voting in models of electoral competition," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 13, pages 218-234, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Hahn Robert, 2010. "Designing Smarter Regulation with Improved Benefit-Cost Analysis," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-19, July.
    19. Alessandro Olper & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Mass Media and Public Policy: Global Evidence from Agricultural Policies," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 27(3), pages 413-436.
    20. Ernesto Dal Bo, 2000. "Bribing Voters," Economics Series Working Papers 39, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Funding; membership decline; party models; collective action; normative theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:646. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.