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The Financial Appeal of Political Parties: Looking for the Determinants of Donors’ Preferences

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Political Party Funding and Private Donations in Italy

Part of the book series: Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series ((IGAD))

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Abstract

This chapter takes a donor-centric approach, with the aim of identifying some of the factors that form the financial dynamics associated with the role of private capital in politics. The comparative literature review indicates that political actors’ structural and individual characteristics can attract undue interest from external donors, who are conceived as rational agents. Additionally, a classification system for political actors’ financial appeal is introduced to assist us in defining patterns in the Italian political financing system.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The polarisation index reported here was created by Pappalardo (1996). It ‘is based on left–right self-placement survey data and calculated as differences between the respective averages of 1–10 scores indicated by respondents who identify with the two parties situated at the extreme right and left of the spectrum’ (see Bardi, 2007: 726).

  2. 2.

    The effective number of electoral parties is calculated based on the vote distribution across all individual parties (see Laasko & Taagepera, 1979).

  3. 3.

    For a complete list of variables defined in the party/candidates dataset, see Appendix A.3.

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  1. Department of Political Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Chiara Fiorelli

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Correspondence to Chiara Fiorelli .

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Fiorelli, C. (2021). The Financial Appeal of Political Parties: Looking for the Determinants of Donors’ Preferences. In: Political Party Funding and Private Donations in Italy. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73869-3_6

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