Towards an organizational perspective on party funding: explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties

Bolleyer, Nicole; Trumm, Siim; Banducci, Susan A.

Abstract

Which European Parliament (EP) parties are able to extract regular donations from their MEPs' salaries and if they extract donations how great are they? In the literature on party finances, there has been a lack of attention paid to the use of salaries of elected representatives as a source of funding. This is surprising given that the national headquarters of many parties in Europe regularly collect 'party taxes': a fixed (and often significant) share of their elected representatives' salaries. In filling this gap, we theoretically specify two sets of party characteristics that account for the presence of a taxing rule and the level of the tax respectively. The presence of a tax depends on the basic ‘acceptability’ of such an internal obligation that rests on a mutually beneficial financial exchange between parties’ campaign finance contributions to their MEPs and MEPs’ salary donations to their parties. The level of the tax, in contrast, depends on the level of intra-organisational compliance costs and parties’ capacity to cope with these costs. Three factors are relevant to this second stage: MEPs’ ideological position, the size of the parliamentary group and party control over candidate nomination. Our framework is tested through a selection model applied to a unique dataset covering the taxing practices in parties across the EU member states.

Citation

Bolleyer, N., Trumm, S., & Banducci, S. A. (in press). Towards an organizational perspective on party funding: explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties. European Journal of Political Research, 52(2), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02068.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 1, 2012
• Online Publication Date: Aug 28, 2012
• Deposit Date: Sep 19, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 19, 2016
• Journal: European Journal of Political Research
• Print ISSN: 0304-4130
• Electronic ISSN: 1475-6765
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 52
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02068.x
• Keywords: Party Funding, Intra-Party Dynamics, Informal Party Practices, Parliamentary Pay, Party-State Relations
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/710831
• Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02068.x/abstract
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Bolleyer, N., Trumm, S. and Banducci, S. A. (2013), Towards an organisational perspective on party funding: Explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties. Eur J Polit Res, 52: 237–263. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02068.x which has been published in final form at ; http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02068.x/abstract This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.