Political Corruption and Campaign Financing

Abstract: Although political leaders, donors and some scholars would argue that there is nothing illegal behind the idea of giving and receiving campaign contributions, this research attempts to demonstrate the contrary. Here, I claim that small and large contributions constitute representations of political corruption because they are given for specific purposes either ideological or personal. Since the relationship between campaign financing and political corruption has not been studied worldwide, in this thesis I conduct a cross-country analysis of 83 countries and find that there is more political corruption: 1) in countries where elections are not funded with public resources; 2) in countries where the impact of legal campaign financing on public policy outcomes is greater; 3) in countries where regulations impose ceilings on election expenses and on the amount of money that parties/candidates can raise in each election; and 4) in countries where regulations make the public disclosure of campaign expenditures compulsory.