Smirnova: Why make political finance transparent? Explaining the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO)’s success in reforming national political finance regulation

Valeria Smirnova (Univ. of Cologne - Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences) has published Why make political finance transparent? Explaining the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO)’s success in reforming national political finance regulation (European Political Science Review, Vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 565-588, November 2018). Here's the abstract:

If transparency in political finance is part and parcel of democracy, why do some countries adopt internationally agreed standards to regulate political finance in a more transparent way, while others do not? This paper (a) suggests a theoretical framework to address this question, taking into account international obligations, existing party finance regulation, and demands for greater legitimacy of political institutions; (b) introduces a unique data set of 46 member-countries of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) project operated by the Council of Europe; and (c) concludes that unwillingness to pay the high domestic costs of changing national regulation is the prime impediment to compliance with transparency regulation proposed by GRECO. Right-of-centre cabinets are, on average, associated with a poorer level of compliance. Interestingly, compliance with recommendations which reduce the privileges of parliamentary parties does not deviate from the overall pattern.