Public Venture Capital and Party Institutionalization

Abstract

Funding of parties is common and controversial in new democracies. Nonetheless, the nascent literature about the effects of money in new party systems largely sidesteps the issue of public funding. This article seeks to begin filling this theoretical and empirical void. Two hypotheses are formulated about the expected effects of introduction and marginal increases in public funding on institutionalization of the party system. The hypotheses are then tested in a statistical study of all new democracies in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and other former Soviet Republics. The results show strong support for the idea that public funding increases institutionalization of new party systems. This is in stark contrast to theories about more established democracies that hold introduction of public funding decreases institutionalization of the party system. Furthermore, the results suggest that differing thresholds to public funding have divergent effects on political institutionalization, but this effect is not necessarily linear.

Assessing the Impact of Campaign Finance on Party System Institutionalization

“…While many scholars have affirmed the importance of PSI (Hankla, 2006;Mainwaring, 1999), less work has focused on what factors catalyse this concept (Birnir, 2005;Mainwaring and Zoco, 2007;Roberts and Wibbels, 1999;Tavits, 2005). Through campaign finance laws or public funds, states can help stabilize party systems since these variables can reduce inequalities among parties, help parties with limited funds in newly democratized states and mitigate the financial strains associated with surging campaign expenses.…”

It’s Been Mostly About Money! A Multi-method Research Approach to the Sources of Institutionalization

“…Interestingly enough, and implicit in previous literature (Bartolini and Mair, 1990;Birnir, 2005;Casal Bértoa, 2012;Tucker, 2006), there seems to be a common causal mechanism linking, positively or negatively, each of the above-mentioned factors with the process of systemic institutionalization. Figure 5 displays a tentative formalization of the mechanism, with the top illustrating the parts and the bottom the observable implications.…”

“…Although Huntington (1968) was the first scholar to point out that political parties can develop rules in order to protect the integrity of the political process from outsiders challenging the status quo ante, it was only with Katz and Mair´s (1995) "cartelization thesis" that scholars started to examine the positive link between public subsidies and PSI (Birnir, 2005;Spirova, 2007). Lipset and Rokkan´s (1967) classical "hypothesis", party systems freeze because "individuals develop attachments to parties on the basis of their social locations -their religion, class, residence (urban or rural) and culture (core versus minority culture)" (Mainwaring and Zoco, 2007:163;Madrid, 2005 Political Culture (PCUL).…”

Parties between thresholds: State subsidies and party behaviour in post-communist democracies

“…Biezen and Rashkova, 2014;Birnir, 2005;Piccio, 2012;Scarrow, 2006). The study of the historical development (i.e.…”