Centre for the Study of Corruption

Of nuclear zombie blasters and party funding. Reflections on the anti-corruption discourse and party funding reform in Great Britain…

A couple of days ago there was a review on the Global Anti-Corruption Blog (GAB) investigating the recent work done by the Money, Politics and Transparency (MPT) research forum. MPT itself is an offshoot of the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), headed up by Professor Pippa Norris – and currently hosting the University of Sussex’s very own Miguel Angel Lara Otaola as a visiting researcher. Above all else MPT looks to be an incredibly useful tool for those of us studying money in politics and it really is worth having a poke around the website, they have some fascinating case studies and a few datasets to have a play around with – if that’s your kind of thing.

Amongst all of this they also intend to release an edited volume of initial findings titled Checkbook Elections which contains chapter’s on party finance regimes of eleven different countries supplied by experts in each case (for example, the British chapter is written by Professor Justin Fisher, who – and this is an understatement – is somewhat of an authority on these matters). Prior to its release (sometime in 2016), MPT have released an executive report, a review of which was the main crux of the aforementioned review article on GAB. As the blog outlines the headline findings in the report are as follows:

1. The limited effects of legal regulations.  “[T]he comparative analysis was unable to establish that the degree of state regulation alone has any significant impact, positive or negative, on long-term societal and political outcomes, including the goals of strengthening political party competition, voter turnout, and anti-corruption.”
2. The most common reforms in recent years have sought to strengthen disclosure and public funding.
3. The effects of formal legal reforms are contingent upon enforcement, which in turn depends on regime type, state capacity, and societal cultures. “[L]egal regulations can only prove effective in states with enforcement capability. .  .  .  Even in countries that do have the capacity to enforce regulations, the political will to do so must also be present.”
4. Mixed policy strategies work best. “[A] balanced mix of regulatory policies to control political finance is probably the most effective strategy, ideally blending a combination of disclosure and transparency requirements, limits on spending and contributions, and public subsidies to political parties.”

The author of the blog, Rick Messick, bemoans that the findings represent ‘thin gruel for reformers hungry for guidance on what works’. Messick somewhat misses the point, however, party funding reform should be seen in very much the same light as we are increasingly seeing anti-corruption reform more generally. We should be wary of the one-size-fits-all panacea which will deliver corruption free party finance, just as we should be wary of one-size-fits-all approaches to anti-corruption. Or to paraphrase Dr. Heather Marquette (who put it rather delightfully if you ask me) in The Guardian this week: there is no nuclear zombie blaster that will eradicate corruption.

This means that to combat corruption in party finance there are a whole range of issues to contend with from ‘regime type [both party funding regime type and actual regime type], state society, and societal cultures’. Therefore, when asking for ‘guidance on what works’ the (sensible) answer is very likely to be ‘well it depends – can I hear a little more about your country specific circumstances?’ This encompasses a wider argument that I have made in numerous places, that state funding has for too long been seen, to those in the party finance reform community in Great Britain, as the nuclear zombie blaster. It is far more helpful to consider not whether a reformed party funding regime will be necessarily less corrupt – but whether it will simply allow for a different type of corruption to become prevalent.

The question of whether state funding is a necessarily less corrupt way of doing things, is something that I have looked at during the course of my research and the answer is (spoiler alert) no. However, there is also the question of whether the current system we have is actually that bad and/or as bad as people think it is? The answer to these questions are (spoiler alert) ‘we don’t really know’ and ‘probably not’. The ‘as bad as people think it is’ question is an important one, and comes up again and again in the transcripts of the public hearings the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) undertook (I’ve read them so you don’t have to) prior to compiling their 2011 report Ending the Big Donor Culture. The answer, more often than not, is something along the lines of: perception of corruption in party finance is so bad, that something should be done because [strong message here] this perception, whether or not it is true, is damaging democracy.

It is also a position that I see repeated in elite interviews during my own research. These hearings, and in many ways party finance reform itself, is a classic example of perception rather than reality guiding, and forming, the policy process. Indeed, to quote Professor Richard Wyn Jones, when appearing before the CSPL, ‘perceptions shape their own reality in politics’. It is of almost no importance whatsoever whether or not the current system is, or is not corrupt, the public think that it is – policy recommendations are being made on the basis that the public think it is – so it may as well be.

Secondly, and coming back to Rick Messick’s blog post (remember that?), this actually may not be all that effective in tackling perceptions of corruption. Messick notes that for him (and I’m inclined to agree) the most important finding in the MPT report is that ‘the level of state interventionism in the political finance arena is not a significant predictor of perceptions of corruption, voter turnout, or party competition’. So ultimately, changing the party funding regime is unlikely to alter perceptions of the party funding regime – or politicians – as corrupt.

So, is there any point in doing anything? Well, yes. For a multitude of reasons – not least because the current system is largely unsustainable in its present form (just ask any former party fundraiser) particularly, due to recent events, for Her Majesty’s Opposition. Further we can’t (and shouldn’t) expect a simple change in the party funding system to act as the cure for what is ultimately a larger, and more general, anti-political sentiment. The evidence from the world of party funding, ultimately, chimes with a growing realisation in the anti-corruption world articulated by Dr. Marquette earlier this week:

“Our childish, simplistic view of corruption has become, like a youngster’s fascination with zombies, simply a manifestation of our fears. A scary word, yet an essentially vague abstraction that speaks to more general worries about unfairness, impunity, abuse of power and waste of scarce public funds… The evidence seems to be telling us we must now start having [a] different, more grown-up conversation on corruption.”

Sam Power, University of Sussex

The summer break hasn’t meant that members of the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption (SCSC) have been twiddling their thumbs; far from it, as Dan Hough reports back on.

Corruption doesn’t take a summer break and neither does the SCSC. There’s been plenty going on. Firstly, Olli Hellmann convened the first annual conference of the Political Studies Association’s specialist group on Corruption and Political Misconduct (see here for the programme). The event took place on 27-28 August in the Freeman Centre on campus. Olli Hellmann himself presented a paper on why anti-corruption interventions fail, whilst Liz David-Barrett (together with Mihaly Fazekas from Cambridge) analysed the relationship between ‘safe seats’ and possible incidences of corruption in local government in the UK. Hellmann then combined forces with one of Sussex’s burgeoning cohort of PhD students, Lets Monyake, to give a paper on corruption and violence in Africa. Finally, Liljana Cvetanoska, another Sussex PhD student, also got in on the act, presenting her research on EU conditionality and anti-corruption in Macedonia.

The SCSC’s newest faculty member, Liz David-Barrett, has been active on a number of other fronts. She’s been responding to her well-received report on ‘Lifting the Lid on Lobbying’. She’s also been on the other side of the pond, analysing (alongside Paul Heywood) whether open government was more accountable government at the American Political Studies Association’s (APSA) annual jamboree in San Francisco. Liz, alongside Dan Hough and John Child, has also all been working with the Cabinet Office to help them think about where the UK is going in terms of its own anti-corruption infrastructure.

August 2015 saw Sussex’s third cohort of MA in Corruption and Governance students come to the end of their 12 month programme, but that didn’t stop some of them from taking part in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style event with Nick Maxwell and other members of Transparency International UK on 4 September. The Sussex guys were encouraged to ‘pitch’ anti-corruption ideas and to explain what they would do if they had the ear of the UK Prime Minister. Sam Power made a strong case for pushing ahead with reform of how UK politics is financed, whilst Ben Halton made an equally impassioned plea for more work to be done on the UK’s ‘open data’ agenda. Matt Broderick argued that the EU’s transparency directive needed to be made to work in practice, and that encouraging states to do this could be in the UK government’s interests with regard to its own attempts to reform the EU, whilst David Ugolor, Sussex MA student recently appointed as advisor to the African Bar Association (AFBA), argued that the UK needed to improve its coordination efforts with other countries. The ‘dragons’ were listened on with interest.

SCSC members have also been publishing their work in academic and non-academic outlets alike. Liz David-Barrett (alongside Ken Okamura) published an article on norm diffusion and reputation in ‘Governance’, one of the leading journals in the field, whilst Dan Hough and Serena Verdenicci have had their work on citizens and anti-corruption accepted for publication in Crime Law and Social Change. A number of SCSC members have also been active in writing in, and speaking to, the media;

• In August Sam Power wrote for the Conversation on party funding and why we need to reform it
• In July Dan Hough wrote for the South China Morning Post on why FIFA was (is) proving so incapable of reforming itself. In July he also wrote in the Conversation on the Indian Premier League (IPL) and its corruption troubles and the Washington Post, again analysing FIFA’s problems. Dan also wrote a piece for the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies on Germany and its corruption challenges.
• In August Liz David-Barrett wrote a widely read piece for Democratic Audit on the effects of codes of conduct on parliamentary practice.
• Dan Hough also spent much of July talking to the media about FIFA. These included appearances on the BBC, CNBC and Good Morning Trinidad and Tobago!

September 2015 sees a fourth cohort of MA students join the 11 PhD students and half dozen staff members in the SCSC. Given that corruption hardly seems to be going out of fashion and given that the SCSC’s role in analysing it seems to be increasing in scope, another busy term undoubtedly lies on the horizon.

On 28 July David Cameron chose Singapore to go big on the UK government’s anti-corruption efforts.  The choice of Singapore will have been no coincidence; the late grandfather of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew turned the city-state from a place where corruption was endemic to one where a strong, vibrant anti-corruption commission, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, helped transform the country develop in to a flourishing, economic success story.  When successful anti-corruption efforts are the talk of the town, the Singaporean experience normally makes more than just an honourable appearance.

Much of what Cameron said (see here) is commendable.  His government is indeed making progress, and the 2014 National Anti-Corruption Plan (see here) provides a good framework for tackling the myriad of issues that the UK still faces.  On the specifics there is also evidence that Cameron wants to move forward; the thorny issue of the beneficial ownership of companies, for example, has been – to the surprise of many – faced down, and the UK is doing a good job in placing itself in the international vanguard in this area.  The 2010 UK Bribery Act, to take another example, is a piece of legislation that has many honourable facets.  There is subsequently mounting evidence that the UK has moved on from assuming that corruption happened in far off places about which we knew little.

Cameron nonetheless needs to be careful that he doesn’t go overboard on the rhetoric.  Matthew Hancock, formerly the UK’s anti-corruption champion, was largely noticeable by his absence in UK domestic politics, whilst his successor, Sir Eric Pickles, doesn’t possess a cabinet rank post.  In and of itself that need not be a major problem.  The head of the UK’s anti-corruption drive needs to be someone who has the character and dynamism to drive the agenda forward; Pickles, as even his detractors are likely to admit, has that.  But, as Robert Barrington, Head of Transparency International in the UK, perceptively noted back in May, Pickles, as then Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and local government, was strong at taking on alleged corruption in the problematic London borough of Tower Hamlets but much less impressive when he led the way in abolishing the audit commission – a body that had a clear and unambiguous role in revealing financial malpractice.  The fact that nothing of note replaced it was even more worrying.

It would be easy to get too caught up in the personality politics of Westminster.  But if the UK is going to carry on the good work that this regime has started and, even more importantly, if the UK’s anti-corruption plan is going to be something that has a long-term impact, then individuals need to be empowered to complete the tasks set out in the plan.  Someone needs to have ownership of it and to stand up and be accountable for implementing it. As things stand, this isn’t the case.

Unless this happens, we will continue to see grand speeches the type of which Cameron delivered in Singapore but frustratingly little in substantive terms. Unless someone specific is tasked with putting each of the plan’s aims in to practice then the successes that Cameron rightly flags will remain beacons in an otherwise choppy sea. Tackling corruption requires both strategy and stickability. The UK may well have a case for saying that it could have both – but someone needs to be tasked with illustrating that that’s the case in practice.

Dan Hough

Put on your cape and pull up you tights because now we can ALL be integrity warriors! Well, that seems to be the newest, en vogue idea in the world of anti-corruption at least…

Citizen engagement is an understandably popular idea. The promise of repurposing the very victims of corruption as monitors, watchdogs, data gatherers and activists evokes a powerful sense of social justice, indeed the very reason that many of us care about the corruption problem in the first place. It is a sad reality then that in practice these strategies often yield decidedly disappointing results, leading us to a difficult proposition. That perhaps it’s time to put aside the convenient morally absolutist rhetoric and break bread with the ‘enemy’.

The term “Citizen Engagement” covers a variety of strategies from the technology driven Ipaidabribe.com to the comic stunts of Dejemos de Hacernos Pendejos (Quit Being an Ass) and beyond. It is this variance that highlights one of the major strengths of the idea that just as corruption can manifest in a variety of ways so too can citizens be engaged as an appropriate reflex. However those schemes that fail to make use of the specific cultural and political landscape where they operate often achieve nothing more than “awareness raising”, an important capacity to be sure, but one seemingly ascribed to even the most disappointing of citizen engagement strategies, like the medal for ‘participation’ awarded to those of us less physically inclined for bothering to show up to our school sports day.

If we look at the work of Shayfeen.com in their “We See You…” campaign to monitor the 2005 parliamentary election in Egypt, we can see some truly inspiring innovations. Tactics included clever branding of their logo and training their members and volunteers in the use of video technology that allowed them to purportedly record thousands of incidences of corruption leading to the implication of 18 judges in electoral fraud. However despite protests and activism these judges were protected by the Mubarak regime. Again in the case of Kenya’s MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights) which intended to conduct a social audit into the mismanagement of community development funds. Results of the scheme were limited as Kenya lacked any right to information legislation and so as one might expect obtaining the relevant documents proved difficult with the scheme relying on the voluntary participation of elected officials. Interestingly though, those elected officials who complied with the scheme were able to parley their involvement into an anti-corruption platform for future elections.

Getting citizens to engage their own collective power against corruption is relatively straightforward. Citizens are vulnerable to both the day to day negative effects of petty corruption as well the infrastructural damage caused by grand corruption and so in many ways they have the most to gain from its eradication. However enlisting the necessary cooperation from the beneficiaries of corruption will likely be more challenging. After all “turkeys don’t vote for Christmas” but maybe they’d vote for snow, indoor trees and the Dr Who Christmas special. Our turkeys have even proven their fondness for ‘gifts’. So the true challenge would appear to be designing adequate ways to incentivise officials and make use of their power and influence rather than treating them as yet another obstacle. Schemes such as the South Korean social movement CAGE (Citizens Alliance for the General Election) who produced a non-partisan blacklist of corrupt politicians designed to influence voters in upcoming elections. Whilst this scheme would appear to fit into that familiar ‘us and them’ way of thinking it has an indirect and ulterior function of promoting those ‘clean’ politicians waiting to take office. Similarly Dosta! (Enough!) in Bosnia-Herzegovina deliberately targeted the then Prime Minister Nedžad Branković in order to make an example of a prominent public figure. Again on the surface this would appear to bring the group into conflict with office holders but Branković was strategically selected by Dosta! due to his waning popularity within his own party. The ousting of Branković could then be seen as a shared goal of Dosta! and his detractors in the Party of Democratic Action.

However just as the fear of reprisal represents a major hurdle in the engagement of citizens so to might we expect public officials to be perturbed by potential retaliation. The power of public officials and institutions should not be overestimated as they operate within the same restrictive political and cultural boundaries as citizen groups. For example, Shayfeen.com’s election monitoring mentioned above lead the group to engage with two judges that attempted to bring criminal prosecutions against those involved with the alleged rigging. In retaliation these judges were themselves investigated and had charges brought against them.

Seeking the engagement of public officials will undoubtedly seem heinous to many anti-corruption champions. It will be a difficult task both practically and morally to unite citizens with public officials, many of whom may be engaged in their own corrupt activities. Choosing the lesser of evils may not be a decision that many want to make but it may be important if citizen engagement is ever to live up to its potential and not prove as inadequate as the lumbering one-size-fits-all approaches that once dominated anti-corruption policy.

Bob Ferrie

University of Sussex

The case of Ashley Mote (see here), the former MEP who has been sentenced to five years in prison for fiddling over £400,000 out of the European Parliament, brings, once again, the issue of parliamentary expenses to the forefront of public debate. To be fair to most of the MPs involved in the 2008/09 debacle, Mote’s case is on a different level to some of the indiscretions committed back then. Mote has been convicted of deception, false accounting, concealing criminal property and theft – that’s a fair bit heavier than quite legally using a system to, for example, claim £3,371 for a new set of furniture (Nick Ainger, Labour) or £980 for bookshelves (Peter Bottomley, Conservative – see here for a full list of who claimed for what in 2008/09). Moat, it would appear, is in a small but quite distinct league of criminals who don’t just bend the rules to suit their own interests, but choose to flagrantly flout them; the famous five MPs who went to prison on account of expenses’ claimed (David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Eric Illsley, Denis MacShane and Elliot Morley) can, with the addition of Moat, now become known as the the Sleazy Six.

Moat’s case is not, however, a particularly useful one in helping anti-corruption scholars work out ways to move the debate on what could, should and should not be claimed on expenses forward. He’s clearly broken the rules, he’s been caught and he’s going to pay for it. But working out what is and isn’t appropriate in terms of expenses claims is still not as easy as many people think it should be. At the beginning of 2014, for example, the Daily Mail (see here) ran a story expressing nothing short of outrage at the pettiness of claiming 30p for a jam doughnut (Rosie Cooper, Labour – for the record, I’d very much like to know where these 30p doughnuts are available, as that is an excellent price), 4p for travel (Tristam Hunt, Labour), 7p for a paper clip (David Cameron, Conservative), 49p for a door mat (John Barrett, Lib Dem – are MPs now shopping at Poundland? That’s a super deal) and 19p for Blu-Tac (Pat McFadden, Labour).  The downright insignificance of some of these claims to one side, the Mail was also enraged as they (the MPs) simply “don’t seem to get it”.  What precisely they don’t “seem to get” remained tantalisingly unclear, as no effort whatsoever was put in to outlining what the perfect expenses regime would look like.  That, it seems, is not the Daily Mail’s job.  It’s much more straightforward to point out some of the quirks within the system, some of the grey areas and some of the more bizarre claims.  Ideas on how to put this right?  No suggestions forthcoming.

It is easy to see both why voters will be annoyed at seeing MPs claim money back on the most trivial of things and why the Mail (amongst others) refused to outline how we might move this debate forward.  The ‘new’ post-2009 expenses regime, headed by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, is undoubtedly tighter and better regulated than the system that came before it, but making value judgments on what is and what is not an acceptable expense is actually very difficult.  MPs have long grumbled that IPSA is a bureaucratic nightmare, although few have dared say that in public.  IPSA’s challenge is to create a system that can be consistent, fair and flexible.  MPs have different needs (i.e. if your constituency is Newcastle upon Tyne Central then you should surely be entitled to claim more in travel costs than if you represent, for example, London-based Twickenham) and they face different challenges in their daily work patterns; the expenses system needs to reflect this and needs to be quick enough on its feet to recognise the difference between legitimate and illegitimate claims.   If anyone reading this blog thinks they have the answer, then IPSA will no doubt be very keen to hear from you.

Dan Hough

On February 10, Transparency International UK launched its new report, ‘Lifting the Lid on Lobbying’.  As lead researcher, The University of Sussex’s Liz David-Barrett sets out the main findings below.

Lobbying is a critical part of the policy-making process in a liberal democracy.  If we imagine a world without lobbying, that would require politicians and civil servants to be experts in a vast range of areas.  But it would also require them to be prophets, able to foresee all of the future consequences of their policies for the many different stakeholder groups in society.

The fact that interest groups influence policy, then, is not a problem, but it does raise difficult questions about how to ensure that everyone who needs a voice has one and that the level of access and influence available to different groups is fair.  Moreover, lobbying is not just about the making of laws and policies.  Groups lobby to win contracts, to influence appointments to public bodies, and to shape the way that funds are allocated.  What is at stake is how public money is spent and whether it serves the public interest.

Ultimately, these questions place an enormous burden on politicians and policy-makers to ensure that they make decisions on the basis of sound evidence and can make thoughtful judgements among competing claims.  This also requires the public to place great trust in policy-makers.

That trust is severely challenged at the moment.  TI’s last Global Corruption Barometer found that 59% of UK respondents believed that the UK government is ‘entirely’ or ‘to a large extent’ run by a few big entitites acting in their own best interests.  In common usage, the term ‘lobbying’ is shorthand for something exclusive, dirty and unfair, something corrupt.

These concerns were shared by David Cameron, when he was opposition leader.  In 2010, he described lobbying as the next big scandal waiting to happen and promised to regulate it more effectively.  Yet our research revealed 14 new scandals related to lobbying and the revolving door that have emerged since his speech.  And that is just the scandals that came to light.

Why is this?  What’s going wrong with lobbying in the UK?

First, transparency is severely lacking.  We found that the vast majority of lobbying in the UK occurs behind closed doors.  Disclosure of lobbying meetings is only required for official ministerial meetings and those with Permanent Secretaries. Yet a great deal of policy-making and lobbying takes place elsewhere, as our interviews with both policy-makers and lobbyists confirmed.

Lobbying of parliamentarians, lobbying of all but the most senior civil servants, lobbying of local government officials and elected members, and lobbying of a vast number of public agencies can take place without records of the meetings being disclosed. Indeed, even lobbying targeted at Ministers need not be disclosed if it occurs outside Departmental meetings.

Another problem here concerns the role of ‘big money’ – that is, large donations by individuals – in financing political parties.   It seems that money might be buying influence, whether in the form of access to policy-makers, honours, or peerages.

A second set of issues relates to the integrity of policy makers.  Recent scandals have revealed politicians and crown servants who were willing to abuse their powers to benefit a private interest group, did so in exchange for payment, and failed to declare such payments.  Other scandals relate to the revolving door, whereby individuals trade on knowledge or contacts gained in public employment when they leave public office (or in anticipation of leaving public office).

These cases suggest that some individuals see public office as an asset which can be traded.  Their behavior showed disregard for the rules which were supposed to shape their conduct, as well as a shocking lack of respect for the spirit of those rules.  We also found that the rules regulating the conduct of politicians and public officials vary considerably in the different national and devolved institutions of the United Kingdom.  This seems a recipe for confusion, and poor accountability.

The third issue is access.  Lobbying looks corrupt when it grants or facilitates preferential access to some groups or individuals, or serves only narrow interests rather than the broader public interest.  It is inevitable that some organisations and individuals are better equipped to engage in public policy and lobbying than others, but policy makers should account for this. While it is impossible to ensure that all groups have equal access, our research suggests that, in the UK, money can buy access.  This prompts suspicions that access is unfair and that decisions are taken to serve the interests of those with greater resources.

Policy-making is becoming more technical and complex. One consequence is that politicians and civil servants increasingly look to external experts for advice, including advisory groups, academic institutions and think tanks.  The current UK government has also created ‘management boards’ responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of individual departments.

While these new governance mechanisms may be necessary, it is not clear that the rules and regulation have caught up.  The process of selecting members of advisory groups lacks transparency, raising risks that external advisors might promote their own agendas.

Secondments into government from private-sector companies also raise questions.  When management consultancies provide staff off the public payroll to work on technical details of policy or implementation in government departments, there is a risk they might shape policy to suit themselves or their clients.

The Lobbying Act ostensibly sought to address these issues, but it is grossly inadequate.  First, it defines lobbyists and the lobbied too narrowly, so that only a tiny proportion of those involved in lobbying are covered by its rules.  Second, the requirements for disclosure on those lobbyists that are included are minimal, far weaker than similar disclosure requirements in the United States for example.  Finally, the sanctions for those who are found to have breached the Act are insignificant, a paltry amount compared to the sums spent on lobbying.

Our new report sets out 15 recommendations to reform lobbying in the UK.  Let us hope that the incoming government will be ready to take up the challenge.

As has been discussed previously on this blog and elsewhere, party finance reform – notably an increase in public funding – is an increasingly popular response to the myriad of financial challenges that political parties face in the 21^st century. The advantages and disadvantages of state funding have been discussed at length by academics, practitioners and politicians alike, with perhaps the biggest ‘pro’ being that it provides the opportunity to rid (or at the very least limit) politics of the undue influence of so-called special interests and wealthy donors. Michael Koss takes this argument a step further by showing that an increase in state funding becomes more likely ‘the more the discourse on political corruption identifies state funding as a remedy against corrupt practice in party politics’. Whilst these arguments are undoubtedly (at least to me) fascinating, what is also interesting about party funding reform – and, indeed, reform more generally – is the unintended consequences that are thrown up when reform occurs.

An example of this forms the basis of a new study by Harvard based PhD candidate Andrew B. Hall. In a study of five state legislatures – Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin – which have strong public funding programmes, or ‘clean election laws’ (the name is, perhaps, instructive of the motivation for implementing said reforms), Hall came up with three key findings. Firstly, as expected (and intended), public funding reduced the financial advantage of incumbent politicians. Secondly, and also as expected (and intended), public funding made elections more competitive. Finally, there was also an unintended consequence, the increase in public funding makes polarization in the state legislature worse. That is to say, legislation that introduces a robust public funding regime creates a disadvantage for moderate party candidates. The reason for this is that individual donors and what Hall calls ‘access oriented interest groups’, donate money in different ways and for different reasons.

The work brings to mind that of Iain McMenamin who shows that, in terms of business financing of political parties, ‘money is multi-lingual’. Donations can be either ideological or pragmatic (for a review of McMenamin’s 2013 book, see here). Ideological donations are donations to a specific party which holds some form of ideological affinity with the donor, whereas pragmatic donations are given without any notion of political affiliation, just to the party which is perceived to hold the most power. In the American context, Hall shows that we can understand ‘access oriented interest group’ donations as largely falling into the latter category which, intentionally or not, tends to favour more moderate candidates. Individual donations, however, fall into the former category, which tends to favour polarising candidates. This is because, unlike pragmatic interest groups, individual donors are much less likely to spread their donations across candidates of different parties, to ensure some form of influence (perceived or otherwise). Individual donors are much more likely to donate to those for whom they have a strong ideological affiliation, who also tend to be on the polarised end of the political spectrum. Therefore, funding reform which introduces significant state subsidy, limits donations from ‘access oriented interest groups’ and privileges individual donations, increasing polarisation in the state senate.

The findings also represent a much larger discursive point when engaging with corruption more generally. There often exists an unspoken dichotomy between acceptable and unacceptable influence. That individual donations are a positive sign of a functioning and vibrant democracy despite the fact that they may lead to ‘a polarized, and probably less functional politics’. Whereas special interest donations (from ‘access oriented interest groups’) tend to represent everything that is wrong with modern democracy and some sort of pervasive, shadowy, Bilderberg-esque influence over politicians – who have little interest in actual, y’know, public service preferring to make as much money from politics as possible before retiring to a cushy job in the private sector. The reality, of course, as these findings show is a little more complicated than this – no reform is perfect, democracy is messy and a trade-off will have to occur.

Beyond this is also the notion that donations are almost intrinsically corrupt if the group donating – or indeed the person being donated to – represents something that one does not agree with. There often seems to be a fairly thin line between what represents a corrupting influence and what does not and that line tends to be drawn alongside some form of normative political judgement. One man’s lobbyist (yuck!) is another man’s advocacy group (hooray!).

This was further shown by reports at the end of 2014 that a new study had tried to answer the question of whether power actually corrupts. One of the lab experiments is described by a co-author of the study as follows:

“Participants played what is called a dictator game. The dictator, referred to as the “leader” in the experiment, could decide how to apportion a sum of money between himself or herself, and his or her team. They had to make choices between serving the greater good – doing what’s right for public welfare by increasing the team’s payout – or serving oneself, thereby increasing the leader’s payout but destroying public welfare.”

The problem here is that the act of selfishness, and to a certain extent hypocrisy, is being (mis)taken to be a necessarily corrupt act. Furthermore, not serving the greater good is also seen as representative of a corrupt act. A person in a position of power (who I may or may not agree with) acting selfishly and not serving the greater good is not necessarily committing a corrupt act, just as a special interest group (who I might not agree with) donating a large sum of money to a politician (who I might not agree with) does not necessarily represent a position of undue influence. That is not to say that the action (or exchange) is desirable, but it is to say we should be wary about screaming (insert expletive of choice) corruption whenever we are presented with something that we disagree with.

To return to the study to hand. The work of Andrew Hall is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it shows us that, at least in the context of the USA, an increase in state funding (at the expense of private funding) leads to certain interesting and unintended consequences. However, American politics is nothing if not exceptional, so I would be curious to see if these findings hold up in other contexts – particularly in the advanced industrial democracies of Western Europe. Secondly, the work of both Hall and McMenamin raises broader theoretical questions about what should – and  should not – be considered an illegitimate, or indeed corrupt, exchange. It is by engaging with this literature and building on it ourselves that we can draw these lines in an ever sharper way.

Sam Power

University of Sussex