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Why make political finance transparent? Explaining the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO)’s success in reforming national political finance regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2018

Valeria Smirnova
Valeria Smirnova*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany
*
*E-mail: vsmirnov@smail.uni-koeln.de
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Abstract

If transparency in political finance is part and parcel of democracy, why do some countries adopt internationally agreed standards to regulate political finance in a more transparent way, while others do not? This paper (a) suggests a theoretical framework to address this question, taking into account international obligations, existing party finance regulation, and demands for greater legitimacy of political institutions; (b) introduces a unique data set of 46 member-countries of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) project operated by the Council of Europe; and (c) concludes that unwillingness to pay the high domestic costs of changing national regulation is the prime impediment to compliance with transparency regulation proposed by GRECO. Right-of-centre cabinets are, on average, associated with a poorer level of compliance. Interestingly, compliance with recommendations which reduce the privileges of parliamentary parties does not deviate from the overall pattern.

Keywords

GRECOpolitical financepolicy changerational choice
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 565 - 588
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2018 

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