Since the 1970s party finance in Sweden on all levels of the political system depends heavily on public subsidies [1] With an estimated SEK 146 (more than $17) per voter a year the spending level is among the highest in the world of established democracies. [2]
Public subsidies are the major source of party funds in Sweden. At the national level they provide 80 to 90 per cent of the major parties' annual revenue.[ citation needed ]
With all Swedish parties "annual routine spending is far more important than extra campaign expenses". [3]
As a consequence of preserving the internal autonomy of political parties as voluntary associations there was no regulation whatsoever for many years. Parties and lawmakers believed that this autonomy had to be preserved. When GRECO started to evaluate "Transparency of Party Funding" in Council of Europe member states the organization recommended to require political parties "to keep proper books and accounts ... to ensure that income, expenditure, assets and debts are accounted for in a comprehensive manner following a coherent format", to consolidate such accounts to include local branches and provide for easy access of the general public to the annual accounts of political parties. [4] The Swedish authorities replied "that they did not have any reason to believe that the longstanding self-regulation" needs to be amended. [5] However, by the end of 2012, the Swedish government had "decided to initiate a legislative process with the purpose of ... making information regarding the funding of political parties more accessible. ... draft legislation would be submitted to Parliament in autumn 2013." [6]
A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns. It is an attempt to move toward a one voice, one vote democracy, and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance.
Social welfare in Sweden is made up of several organizations and systems dealing with welfare. It is mostly funded by taxes, and executed by the public sector on all levels of government as well as private organizations. It can be separated into three parts falling under three different ministries. Social welfare is the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. Education is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Research. The labour market is the responsibility of the Ministry of Employment.
Party subsidies or public funding of political parties are subsidies paid by the government directly to a political party to fund some or all of its political activities. Most democracies provide cash grants from taxpayers' money, the general revenue fund, for party activity. Such funds may cover routine or campaign costs incurred by the party. Among the established democracies the United States, Switzerland and India are the most notable exceptions. Party subsidies can be relatively small or quite generous. In the U.S., the Presidential Fund takes money from the general fund only after authorized by a statement indicated upon a taxpayer's tax return.
The Group of States against Corruption is the Council of Europe's anti-corruption monitoring body with its headquarters in Strasbourg (France). It was established in 1999 as an enlarged partial agreement by 17 Council of Europe member states.
Sören Axel Wibe was a European economist and eurosceptic politician, born in Östersund. He was a Social Democratic Member of the European Parliament (MEP) 1995–1999, member of the Riksdag 2002–2006, and who since 6 July 2008 was party leader of the June List. In January 2009 he was elected President of the EUDemocrats - Alliance for a Europe of Democracies, a eurorealist European political party with members from 15 European countries.
Tommy Möller is a Swedish professor of Political science at Stockholm University, and a frequent conservative political commentator in the Swedish media.
Political finance covers all funds that are raised and spent for political purposes. Such purposes include all political contests for voting by citizens, especially the election campaigns for various public offices that are run by parties and candidates. Moreover, all modern democracies operate a variety of permanent party organizations, e.g. the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in the United States or the Conservative Central Office and the Labour headquarters in the United Kingdom. The annual budgets of such organizations will have to be considered as costs of political competition as well. In Europe the allied term "party finance" is frequently used. It refers only to funds that are raised and spent in order to influence the outcome of some sort of party competition. Whether to include other political purposes, e.g. public relation campaigns by lobby groups, is still an unresolved issue. Even a limited range of political purposes indicates that the term "campaign funds" is too narrow to cover all funds that are deployed in the political process.
Party finance in Germany is the subject of statutory reports, which up to 35 parties file annually with the administration of the German parliament. Important questions pertaining to political party funding can be answered by analysing the data given in these financial reports: How much money is raised and spent by each party operating in Germany? What assets are at the disposal, which debts are on the books of German parties? For which purposes did parties spend their funds? From which itemized sources did a specific party collect its revenue? Who are the donors of major contributions and how much did each donor give during a specific calendar year?
Political party funding is a method used by a political party to raise money for campaigns and routine activities. The funding of political parties is an aspect of campaign finance.
A party political foundation in Germany is a state-subsidised political foundation that's affiliated to a political party. There are seven foundations at the federal level: one for each party represented in the federal parliament (Bundestag). The major characteristics of all such organizations is that they do party related work like general information about the ideological cause, training of volunteers, publication of pamphlets and international aid for democracy building.
The term corporate donation refers to any financial contribution made by a corporation to another organization that furthers the contributor's own objectives. Two major kinds of such donations deserve specific consideration, charitable as well as political donations.
By and large political finance in the Netherlands is a party matter. Compared to other nations the spending level is quite moderate, annually about €2,40 per voter.
Rainer Eisfeld is a German political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Osnabrück.
Party funding in Austria has been subject to public regulation and public subsidies since 1975. Although the demarcation between campaign financing and routine activities due to overlapping election cycles and "permanent campaigning" is quite difficult, Austrian law has for a long time provided for separate subsidies from the federal budget. So have done the nine states of the Austrian federation and some municipalities.
Political funding in New Zealand deals with political donations, public funding and other forms of funding received by politician or political party in New Zealand to pay for an election campaign. Only quite recently has political funding become an issue of public policy. Now there is direct and indirect funding by public money as well as a skeleton regulation of income, expenditure and transparency.
Political funding in Ireland has re-emerged as an issue of public policy quite recently when in 2012 the Electoral Act of 1997 was amended to cover basic needs of transparency and control.
Party funding in Israel is political financing in Israel that covers the funds raised and spent to influence political competition between political parties, especially the campaigns for national (Knesset) and municipal elections as well as the routine operation of party organizations. Ever since the Yishuv. the pre-state formation of Jewish life in Eretz Israel, political parties have been the foremost organizations of the polity.
Michiel Frans van Hulten is Director of Transparency International EU and a former Dutch politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament (1999–2004) and was chairman of the Labour Party from December 2005 until April 2007.
Pavo Barišić is a Croatian philosopher and politician who served as the Minister of Science and Education in the Cabinet of Andrej Plenković from 19 October 2016 until 9 June 2017. He publishes in the field of philosophy of law, politics and democracy, history of philosophy, and bioethics. He is a member of Croatian Democratic Union.
Stefan Wurster is a German political scientist, Professor for Policy Analysis at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy at the Technical University of Munich and the member of the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology. He is known for his research on policy analysis in policy fields related to sustainability, democracy-autocracy comparisons, development of party systems and governance structures in energy, innovation, research and environmental policy.