The Funding of Party Competition ― Political Finance in 25 Democracies

This volume is an empirical, comparative analysis of the funding of political parties in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uruguay. The analysis assesses where funding comes from and for what political purposes, the influence of political funding on party systems and party organizations, the financial costs of political competition, whether there is a way to systematically measure and aggregate the costs of political funding, which democracies are the most excessive spenders and which are the least, the features of political systems that impact levels of spending, whether the increased use of paid media advertising and/or new campaign technology has increased costs, the relative importance of grass roots funding of political parties, the influence of interested money in political financing, the types of graft that are prevalent in party funding, the impact of public subsidies for political funding, and the influence of political financing on the outcome of elections. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)