By donators I mean individual citizens, an average ‘Joe’, not corporations.
Who do you think are usually the donators? Younger or more elderly people? Members of smaller parties than bigger ones?
Also have you personally donated to a political party? What was your motivation?
For context, in the USA for example americans apparently do send money to their parties or even to specific politicians they like, afaik.
As for me, I’m originally from a not-so-democratic (non-EU) country whose political parties get the fundings from the government. And people don’t donate them, it’s actually something unheard of. Also the majority of the population is poor anyway. Those few who are considered ‘upper middle class’ in my country could probably donate around $10 maximum lol and that would be one-time occurence, not regularly.
So I am interested to know how European countries are doing in this regard.
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Very staunch supporters and members (i.e registered supporters, not politicians) of political parties will sometimes donate but other than that it’s usually the politicians who pay for their own ads. They will also often call people or send out mass text messages to advertise their party and its policies. It’s more common to see unions and interest groups put out ads voicing support for a specific topic their preferred political party is platforming on and never outright voicing support for the politician or party. Overall, Iceland is so small that politicians and parties don’t usually need much money to get plenty of reach plus most people already know them.
By law, parties ar required to disclose their finances each year, including donations. That being said, in regular, non-election years very few average Joes donate to any party. Unless you are relatively rich, it is not a regular thing at all. Most donations are larger sums rather than many small individual donations. Individual donations are more common during campaigns when some candidates even call for it, but I still wouldn’t say it’s widespread or something that people that arent party members do.
Yes, of course. Usually members affiliated to a party donate to their party (average Joes can be members of a political party, they do no need to be politicians or aspiring politicians). A random person donating to a party theycare unaffiliated would be uncommon and weird.
Corporations cannot donate to parties, it’s illegal and it would be considered corruption (it happens and is always a scandal when it hits the news). A corporation cannot buy a party or a politician favour. That’s not a democracy (because the power rely on corporations, not on the people)
Donating to specific politicians is also illegal.
Political parties accounts should be available to the authorities if required.
It’s not very common, you can donate but the campaigns are mostly funded through public means (government) and a bit through memberships
one of the reasons it isn’t common, is that people in general aren’t loyal to one party and like new faces and parties every now and then
people who are loyal to one party are in the minority, some would consider them cultists – depending on the leader of the party they support.. but in the big picture and party leader personalities aside, there is not much differences in terms of party policies and extremists usually don’t get close to 10% of support
so it’s more like, who is currently a fresh and interesting face, because they all promise better welfare, greener future and commitment to EU goals, etc.
politics is not a big deal, unless it’s the week before elections, but that’s not hype enough to throw your money away for people whose career is making promises, they are paid enough already when they get the job
Yes, but parties are required to disclose any donations, and it happens not to the level like in the US. The AfD landed in really hot waters when people found out that they didn’t disclose some of the donations they received. That happened to the CDU as well.
>Do people support financially political parties in your country?
Some do.
>For example throught donations?
Yes.
>Is that funding information (i.e. how much a party has received) available for general public?
Yes, but only if a given person donates enough money to be registered which is like ~2700€ iirc?
>Do those parties encourage donations?
Eh somewhat, depending on the parties financial standing.
>Who do you think are usually the donators? Younger or more elderly people? Members of smaller parties than bigger ones?
Usually members because they pay a members fee which is essentially a donation in its own right I guess. Otherwise it’s somewhat older people.
>Also have you personally donated to a political party? What was your motivation?
Technically, yeah. Im a member of a political party so.
>As for me, I’m originally from a not-so-democratic (non-EU) country whose political parties get the fundings from the government. And people don’t donate them, it’s actually something unheard
Parties also get funding from the government. It’s dependent on how many votes the parties get.
Discounting members—which I don’t think is what you’re talking about—then yes, non-members also donate to political parties, and many political parties advise donors as to how to circumvent transparency laws.
The liberal parties are the parties that receive the most donations, naturally from the richest stratums of society, who’s interests they represent, while Leftist parties generally rely on membership fees and party taxes to fund their activities (plus the party-support which parties participating in elections receive.)
This often leads to discussions about transparency regarding money in politics, but with only the two (nominally) socialist parties in parliament, the Red-Green Alliance (_Enhedslisten_) and the Socialist People’s Party (_SF_) in favour of thorough reform, it seldom goes further than the conversation.
The party that receives the most donations is Liberal Alliance; a, as the name implies party, liberal party, perhaps pedants would call them “classical liberal,” and have strong connections to the upper classes of society, the richest Danes and businessmen, i.e. the “capitalist class,” so to speak. For a long time it was joked that it was the “personal political party” of Lars Seier, a prominent banker who also has connections to the liberal think-tank CEPOS, and other such endeavours.
Personally I’ve never donated to a party, but I have been a member of different parties at different times, and thus paid my membership fees.
The Conservative Party has always been funded by big, rich, private and corporate donors.
The Labour Party has traditionally been funded by unions and a few wealthy philanthropists, as well as by party members.
The minor parties – the Liberal Democrats and the Greens – do what they can from their members. They don’t have massive campaign war-chests.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) depend on raffles, membership donations, activist fund-raising.
They used to say that the difference between an SNP meeting and a Labour meeting was that in a Labour meeting they hand out the expenses claim forms, and in SNP meetings they hand out raffle tickets to sell. I think all that is changing, though, with the rise of online donations.
There is a thing called ‘Short Money’, which is public funding given to opposition parties to help with their policy research and administrative support in Parliament, but it does not, as far as I know, provide for electoral or campaign funding: all that comes from private sources.
It’s quite uncommon and limited. And besides, the ones who do donate are not really average people, more than likely there is an interest somewhere.
If you want to deepdive, there is a good tracking website, http://www.banipartide.ro, but you will have to use translate.
It’s allowed but I don’t think it’s really common. The maximum amount is limited to 2000 euro per year per person/company, regardless, so that’s basically peanuts.
This law was put in force because of conflicts of interest, e.g. a politician who was responsible for handing out building permits would take large sums of money from construction companies.
Information regarding the viewing of election expenses is kinda vague and it seems like you can only view this during a 15 day window, 61 days after elections took place, personally, at the court of first appeal. It doesn’t even say _which_ court, because there are 13.
Yes.. anyways, not “average joe”. It’s generally people with a lot of money wanting to pay for some “influence”. That amount of money is very small compared with what you have in USA. Historically it has been the case that rich people generally economically supported the conservative party, while the unions supported the labour party.. Though many of the rich ones has kept a bit away from such donations in recent years, though the labour party still get their money from the biggest unions..
The parties in norway have to be open about what they receive as economic contribution by law. In fact it’s pretty easy to find out who has contributed as every party having income above 12.000 NOK has to report. [The site](https://www.partifinansiering.no/en/) where you can find the information is very good.. Gives both information about public economic support, private support and to which part of the party.. youth organisation, local organization.. or the main party..
Generally if you’re part of the parliament you get income from parliament itself. Just to give you a clue.. The main conservative party in 2021 had income of 118 million NOK, 79 million of those come from the parliament. Income from private citizens was ca. 8 million…while 13 millions was from private companies.. so roughly some 17% of their financial support from donors. It’s just an example.. so those norwegians wanting to tell that some other is even worse.. sure.. but just to give the impression for a mayor party the amount donors make up of the economy of a mayor party..
Private donations seems to have become more unpopular in recent years.. people don’t want to be “connected” with politics, when their main business is some other places..Though private donations are led by the political battles as well. If you get the cases that gets people upset, they will contribute.. Ahead of the EU-referendum in 1994 (election was in 1993).. There were a lot of donations to parties..
Though donations from “average joe”.. quite uncommon in norway.. Most “average joe” recognize that the parties is funded through the tax bills and get their extras in election years from companies and unions/interest organisations.. Norway is probably among the cheapest countries in europe to buy influence if you look at the contributions and compare it with other nations in europe..
Yeah, we have transparent accounts for donations for political parties or individual candidates (for mayors, president, etc.), which are public and anyone can check. Parties also issue reports on their spending, overview of donations. Parties also receive funding based on the election results. Most donations from individuals go to emerging parties or independent candidates who do not have this funding yet, but of course all parties will have some calls to action.
We in general have quite a big limitations on how long campaign can be, how much exposure you can get, so they do not tend to be super expensive and if they are, they get lot of scrutiny. Same if they have some big corporate donor or do not disclose something.
Yes, but the biggest parties receive most of their funding from suspiciously boring legal entities, not individuals. Companies can donate to parties, but there’s a limit on how much anyone can donate, so the parties get maxed out donations from lots of random LLCs. It’s either lobbying/corruption, or an alternative way for the state to finance loyal parties, since direct funding is fixed and based on the latest election results.