Monitoring election campaign finance: a handbook for NGOs.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Open Society Justice Initiative.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Campaign funds.

Corporations--Political activity.

Corporations.

Political corruption--Prevention.

Political corruption.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York: Open Society Institute, 2004.

Summary:

The Open Society Justice Initiative has published a handbook to aid civil society groups in tracking election campaign finances and exposing corruption. Monitoring Election Campaign Finance: A Handbook for NGOs is the most systematic effort to date to bring together and digest the range of campaign finance monitoring experience gained in recent years.Corrupt electoral campaign financing—whether by private donors or government incumbents commandeering state resources—is damaging not only to the electoral process, but to democracy itself. Political finance regulations, intended to create a level playing field for electoral competition, are often inadequate.NGOs and activists across the world have begun to monitor campaign finance and advocate reforms in order to reduce the opportunities for corruption, with some promising results. But guidance on the best ways to monitor election campaign finance remains scarce. Monitoring Election Campaign Finance: A Handbook for NGOs provides a collection of good practices and tools, organized in the form of practical guidelines and discussions of key concepts, to assist NGOs in designing and carrying out effective campaign finance monitoring and reform programs tailored to needs in their own countries.Moving beyond previous efforts in this field, which focus on campaign income and donations to parties and candidates, the handbook also addresses campaign expenditures—another frequent area of corrupt behavior—and the use or abuse of public resources by governing parties in electoral campaigns. Additional chapters offer guidance on the effective use of monitoring results and evaluation of monitoring exercises.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Sources

Case studies

Latvia: 2002 parliamentary elections

Romania: election year 2000

Slovakia: 2002 parliamentary elections

Ukraine: 2002 parliamentary elections

Other monitoring and research

The Poder Ciudadano “Transparent Elections” model

Armenia: 2003 parliamentary elections

Brazil: monitoring donations to election candidates

The United States: tracking donors and political decisions

Poland: doctoral research on party finance

Uruguay and Costa Rica: doctoral research on political finance and state funding

Zimbabwe: monitoring parliamentary election campaigns

Russia: monitoring the misuse of administrative resources

Monitoring campaign finance: an overview

Defining campaign finance and corruption

What is election campaign finance?

What is corruption in election campaign finance?

Monitoring objectives

Assessing the regulatory framework and its enforcement

Searching for evidence of corruption

Promoting transparency in the campaign finance system

Deciding what to monitor

Income and expenditure

The Justice Initiative approach

The scoping study

The monitoring methodology

Project implementation

Using the monitoring results

Evaluating success

Planning a monitoring project: the scoping study and project design

Sources of information

Collecting the facts

How election campaigns are conducted

Designing the monitoring project

Project strategy

Sources of information for monitoring

Sampling

Logistics

Implementation

Other relevant issues

Using monitoring results and evaluating success

Monitoring campaign expenditure

Basic issues

What is campaign expenditure?

Categories of campaign expenditure

Monitoring campaign outputs

Using the results of monitoring

Advertising and publicity

Assessing the cost of placing advertisements

Assessing the cost of producing advertisements

Hidden advertising

Hidden advertising: a form of media bias

Identifying qualitative bias

Identifying quantitative bias

Estimating the volume of hidden advertising

Nonadvertising expenditure

Operational and administrative costs

Polling, market research, and campaign strategy design

Rallies, events, and direct contact with voters

Distribution of money and other direct benefits to voters

Monitoring campaign income

What is campaign income?

Analyzing disclosure statements

Disclosure requirements

Comparing declared income to monitored spending

Assessing the veracity of disclosure statements

Tracking quid pro quo donations

The investigative approach to monitoring income

Surveying the media

Building credibility

Conducting interviews

The misuse of administrative resources in election campaigns

The misuse of administrative resources: an overview

What constitutes misuse of administrative resources?

Types of administrative resources

The impact of administrative resource misuse on campaign finance and the political system

Administrative resources and campaign finance regulation

Administrative resources and “state capture”

The financial impact of misusing administrative resources

Institutional resources

Financial resources

Media resources

The interaction of different types of resources

Monitoring the misuse of administrative resources

Selecting a monitoring approach

Identifying categories for monitoring

Defining the monitoring methodology

Monitoring the media

Monitoring hidden advertising (misuse of media resources)

Monitoring media reports of administrative resource misuse

Monitoring institutional advertising (misuse of financial resources)

Recording the findings of media monitoring

Direct observation of electoral campaigns

Interviews

Whom to interview

Monitoring the budget

Choosing a methodology

Findings produced by different monitoring methods

How to use monitoring results

Presentation of project findings

Dissemination of results

Advocacy

Presenting the case for reform

Building relationships with stakeholders

Seeking redress: litigation and other complaint procedures

Building support for reform

Campaign finance regulations

Other relevant regulations

Enforcement

The importance of local circumstances

Input for further monitoring

Project evaluation

Criteria for measuring success

Project inputs: evaluating the allocation of project resources

Project activities: evaluating the implementation of monitoring

Project outputs: evaluating the products of monitoring

Project outcomes: evaluating the project results

The logistics of conducting evaluations

The benefits of independent evaluation

Timing: the problem of long term outcomes

Concluding remarks

Appendices

Appendix 1: Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, Recommendation Rec (2003) 4

Appendix 2: Sample transparency agreement

Appendix 3: Materials for monitoring campaign events

Questionnaire on election campaign events

Template for monitoring campaign events

Rules and guidelines for regional monitors of campaign events

Suggested responses to typical questions from event organizers

Glossary

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.