Abstract
Party finance is one of the direct channels through which economic inequality can lead to political inequality. With different political views being backed by actors with a contrasting level of wealth, parties might have an incentive to cater to the demands of their potential donors. In addition, unequal resources across parties lead to sometimes large differences in campaign budgets with potential influence on electoral outcomes. It is argued that these inequalities could be restrained by party finance regulations. Using a comparison between cantons that have party finance regulations and cantons in which no regulations exist, the empirical analyses reveal that laws requiring parties to disclose their sources of funding reduce the extent of unequal representation across income groups.
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Notes
- 1.
For more details regarding the exact nature of these regulations see the discussion below or the following laws: Il Gran Consiglio Della Repubblica e Cantone Ticino (1998) and Le Grand Conseil de la Rébublique et du canton de Genève (1982).
- 2.
See parliamentary initiatives : 09.415 – Initiative parlementaire. Créer enfin la transparence dans la politique suisse; 09.416 – Initiative parlementaire. Réduire l’inégalité des chances lors de l’élection du Conseil national en 2011; 09.442 – Initiative parlementaire. Transparence des comptes des partis politiques.
- 3.
In 1982, the cantonal government included one member of the socialist party, while the six other members of government were from parties of the right of the political spectrum (Parti libéral, Parti radical and Parti démocrate chrétien). In the 100-member legislature, there were 26 socialists and 10 members of “Travail – Alliance de Gauche”, a party on the very left of the political spectrum. The remaining 64 legislators were from parties of the right (Parti libéral, Parti radical and Parti démocrate chrétien) and the radical right (Vigilance).
- 4.
The « Gran Consiglio » (cantonal legislature) then included 17 members who were affiliated with parties from the left – 15 of which were members of the socialist party – while the remaining 73 members of this 90-member assembly were from the right. The five member cantonal government at the time included only one socialist.
- 5.
To recall, the question is : “Are you in favour of an increase or a decrease in the taxation of high incomes”.
- 6.
Taking the weighted mean of parties elected in a given canton instead of the median does not influence the substance of the results presented below.
- 7.
I take as a reference the beginning of the 2007–2011 legislature. It has to be noted, however, that during this legislature, several MPs belonging to the parliamentary group of the SVP left it, first to sit as independent and, from 2009 on, to form the “Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei” parliamentary group. Similarly one member of the SVP group affiliated with the party “Eidgenössisch-Demokratische Union” left the SVP group at the end of 2007, but his party colleague who replaced him after his resignation reintegrated the SVP parliamentary group in 2009.
- 8.
The results are the same if these canton-specific measures of relative income are used as dummy variables in the analysis or when the analysis only differentiate between three classes of citizens as in chapter 5.
- 9.
Ideally, we should also introduce interaction terms between these context-level variables and income, but given the low number of cases at the context level such a model would be saturated.
- 10.
See for instance the « Projet de Loi Doris Angst » currently debated in Neuchâtel.
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Rosset, J. (2016). The Moderating Effect of Party Finance Regulations. In: Economic Inequality and Political Representation in Switzerland. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27117-0_8
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