MONEY IN POLITICS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Over the last decade, many aspects of political finance practices –from raising funds to campaign advertising to reporting and disclosing political parties’ finances– have gone digital. While they have created several opportunities, they have also tested the limits of almost all aspects of regulatory frameworks.

Online campaigning helps political parties and candidates reach out to more voters with comparatively lower costs and allows them to use more targeted messages when compared with other traditional campaign tools. However, digital technologies also pose several challenges for campaign finance. Some of those challenges include but are not limited to lack of access to political finance data, difficulties associated with tracing the source and destination of online expenditures, the speed of digital innovations outdating legislation, a lack of capacity within oversight agencies and regulatory bodies, and weak inter-agency coordination, among others.

While there is a general understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with digital aspects of political finance, there needs to be more detailed and comparative information on how countries try to adapt to and cope with these practices. International IDEA aims to advance a global reform debate on political finance in the digital age by collecting comparative data and strategies worldwide. This project, led by the Money in Politics programme, also contributes to International IDEA´s larger initiative on Digitalization and Democracy. 

Money in Politics in the Digital Age

A project lead by International IDEA to analyse global trends in political finance and online campaigns.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN FINANCE

Collecting data and information on the regulatory environment across countries

Getting to grips with the flow of money in the digital campaign sphere is essential for understanding how the wider influence ecosystem at elections operates. Political parties, candidates and third parties increasingly spend more financial resources on online campaign tools. Also, external suppliers are often paid to consult on election messaging and polling, provide social media tools and devise large-scale online advertising campaigns. Yet, there is still limited financial transparency around online campaigns worldwide.

International IDEA collects data and information on the regulatory environment across countries and examines its robustness vis-à-vis digital campaigning methods. It also documents the experience of oversight agencies in dealing with the challenges associated with such novel modes of campaigning. 

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CASE STUDIES SERIES: POLITICAL FINANCE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Case studies with good practices and lessons learned on digital political finance 

The case study series under the project ´Political Finance in the Digital Age´ collects empirical information about the ways countries adapt to and cope with political finance challenges associated with digitalization. Through the project, members of political finance oversight agencies and civil society organizations, political party officials and legislators can learn about good practices and lessons learned from various countries that can help them devise and implement political reforms to protect the integrity of political processes and institutions against existing and emerging digital risks.

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DIGITAL REPORTING AND DISCLOSURE OF POLITICAL FINANCE DATA

Introducing a digital system for financial report

Transparency in money in politics can be greatly increased by introducing a digital system where political parties file their financial reports online to the oversight agency, with the data then publicly available in the form of a searchable database on the agency’s website. International IDEA has developed several practice-oriented reports in order to support oversight agencies interested in building similar systems in their countries.  

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