It is quite clear how political parties play an important role in today’s modern democratic world. They control the decisions of the government, compose up majority members for any countries parliament and also help assist in the appointment of party members to aid constitutional courts. For my essay I will be looking at, what parties are, how parties get their resources, how do they receive funding / has this changed over time and finally the consequences for the ways a party will operate.
Political parties in other parts of the world such as United States are primarily candidate-focused parties. Elsewhere, such as in democratically developing countries they are more focused around a single leader party that can be described as transient. However, some of their funding methods can be similar to that found in European parties. European parties undoubtedly do more as organizations and thus need more resources. Obviously they still
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One argued advantage of state funding to political parties is that it reduces the amount of corruption within politics and allows for more democratic governance. Vote buying is a prime example of this. Parties and their candidates will issue ‘benefits’ such as material goods or as mentioned before, certain conditions that will be adhered to once the said party is in governance. (Schedler and Schaffer, 2007: 17-30) Obviously corruption is hard to completely root out as can be seen in the ‘Mani Pulite’ case in Italy. During the 1990s Political corruption in Italy was widespread and more often than not, it was the main issue in Italian politics at that time. February 1992 saw the commencement of an investigation by magistrates in Milan into nationwide corruption in Italy. At the end of the investigation in March 1993 there was numerous cases of ‘tagenti’ or bribe taking against 150 members of parliament and over 900 local politicians. (Vannuci, 2009: 233-