Session 1

Session 3: “Party and Group Perspectives on Deregulation” Iain McMenamin, “Dissensus Down Under: Changing Patterns of Political Finance Regulation in Australia” Lisa Young, “Election Finance Reform as Partisan Tactic: An early evaluation of the Conservative Party of Canada’s election finance reforms” Robert G. Boatright, “Campaign Finance Law and Functional Differentiation among Nonparty Organizations in the United States” \nDiscussant: Diana Dwyre\nABSTRACTS\nDissensus Down Under: Changing Patterns of Political Finance Regulation in Australia Iain McMenamin, Dublin City University, Ireland\nAustralia has a left-right party system. Both the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Liberal Party have access to pragmatic financing from the business sector. However, the Liberals also receive significant ideologically-motivated funding from Australian business that make up for the funds the ALP receive from labour unions. Over the last thirty years, Australian political finance in general, and the regulation of business funding in particular, has tracked the partisan composition of government. The introduction of disclosure and an ideological lurch towards the centre allowed the ALP to fundraise from business beginning in the 1990s. The Liberals later raised the threshold for disclosure, but now as the ALP has swept to power at the Commonwealth and State levels there is a movement towards a ban on corporate donations.\nElection Finance Reform as Partisan Tactic: An early evaluation of the Conservative Party of Canada’s election finance reforms Lisa Young, University of Calgary, Canada\nIn 2004, Canada entered into what appeared to be a bold experiment in election finance reform. Federal political parties were to be weaned off their dependence on corporate and union contributions and transitioned to a steady diet of public subsidies, provided annually on a per-vote basis. A change of government caused a reversal of this policy in 2011, leaving Canada with very strict contribution laws and a phasing out of public subsidies to parties. This paper argues that the Conservative Party of Canada, which initiated these reforms, did so at least in part in an effort to gain an additional electoral advantage over its rivals, which had not proved as adept at grassroots fundraising. Examining fundraising data for all three of the major Canadian political parties, this paper will offer an early evaluation of whether this political tactic is likely to succeed, and reflect on the interplay between electoral competitiveness and fundraising capacity for Canadian parties.\nCampaign Finance Law and Functional Differentiation among Nonparty Organizations in the United States Robert G. Boatright, Clark University, USA\nThe past two American elections have taken place in a legal context of relaxed restrictions on spending by nonparty groups, but with the limits imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 on contributions to and expenditures by political parties still in place. The result of this environment has been a movement by interest groups away from the issue-based differentiation that marked the largest advocacy groups of the 1990s to a form of functional differentiation, in which interest groups appeal to members not on the basis of what they stand for, but of what they can do. Although this change in the niches sought by groups has numerous parallels in literature on marketing and in literature on changes in political parties and political media, few analysts of American politics have discussed the consequences of this change for the role of interest groups in American political campaigns. In this paper I explore the nature of this differentiation and the consequences of it for party competition and partisan polarization.\nFurthermore, I contend that it is possible to measure this differentiation by looking at de facto coordination between groups, and between groups and parties, in choosing where to spend money. It is widely held that although explicit coordination between groups and political parties or candidates is prohibited, it is generally possible to coordinate in practice without any formal agreement to do so. By exploring differences in spending by groups in congressional campaigns, it is possible to identify instances where groups have sought to draw upon their own functional expertise to complement each other’s activities.

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