Money, Corruption, and Political Competition in Established and Emerging Democracies by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1037793
Publisher: Lexington Books

Conclusion

Clean Elections has not changed in any fundamental way the political systems we have examined. Yet it did have a measurable effect. In uncontested races it tended to reinforce existing factors that already help determine electoral results. Incumbency remained an advantage to candidates in both primary and general election contests, and the standing of the two parties within each state was enhanced, as witnessed by the overall decrease in the number of independent candidates in recent elections. Clean Elections likewise tightened already competitive elections, thus creating what could be called “a telescoping” effect, wherein relatively dim features acquire prominence. A similar conclusion holds for the style of campaigns: Clean Elections did not bring about strategic changes but rather lent accent to current courses. Is all this a reflection of some exclusive American variables, or should we expect to find comparable results elsewhere?

Katz and Mair’s (2009) restatement of their cartel party thesis is highly suggestive.50 The emphasis on the increasing dependence of parties on public funding as “the key indicator of cartelization,” they conclude, may not have been justified. Rather, the cartel party emerged where changes in the national and international environments had already undermined the stakes of the traditional electoral competition, and the interpenetration of party and states as well as tendencies for party collusion were already discernible. The development of cartel parties, in turn, rendered these characteristics prominent and took them to their logical conclusion. In short, as in the case we examined in the United States, public funding propelled European systems in the direction they were already taking.51

This, however, does not fully answer our question. To say that the public funding of competition may or may not lead to a given direction does not define the direction itself. Can it lead in one direction only, that is, to the stabilization of the status quo, the rendering of the goals of politics “self-referential, professional, and technocratic,” the organization of campaigns on the basis of a strong reliance on state subventions, and the focusing of competition “less on differences in policy and more … the provision of spectacle, image, and theater?”52 A study of any European-like system, let alone an examination of a wide array of systems and times, is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, we hope that a few cursory notes would suffice to suggest that what had happened in the United States should not have taken us by surprise.

If public campaign funding helps to solidify the status quo, we should have expected relative constancy where it exists and greater flux where it does not. The reverse is true in the case of Israel. The country, of course, is not a part of Europe. Nevertheless, it has been argued53 that it is like every other European country but very much more so. Sharing the political setup and many of the characteristics of Western multiparty systems, the dramatic nature of its politics accentuates processes that may be muted elsewhere. It was also among the first to introduce public campaign funding (1969), proceeded in Europe only by Germany, Austria, and Sweden.

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