Search results
home Home navigate_next Search results

Search results

Abstract

In a political campaign, candidates attempt to mobilize voters by using contributions from individuals, corporations, and political parties. It is an accepted fact of democracy that campaigns should attempt to outdo one another in both the amount they collect in contributions and what they spend on campaigns. Previous research has explored the incumbent advantage in campaign finance, but many interesting factors remain. For instance, is fund-raising aided by factors such as the closeness of an election or a candidate’s tenure in the Legislative Yuan? In this study, we explain campaign contributions using data from prediction markets and television news reports to account for variations in campaign spending. Our results suggest that incumbent advantage does indeed affect contributions and that DPP candidates outperformed other candidates in campaign finance. We also find that previous electoral margins and television news coverage contribute significantly to campaign donations, and that election betting has an impact on spending. These findings suggest that a political party’s general campaign can influence the election race of an individual candidate, and that contributors tend to bet on likely winners, deepening the influence of the electoral system on competing political parties.

Abstract

Interest groups in the democracy have been playing an important role in policy making. The most influential way to impact the public policy and law making is lobbying the congress. Of all different tactics of lobbying, money donation, especially the campaign contribution, is recognized the most effective approach. Because of the changes in campaign techniques and process since 1950's, it requires more money to support the campaign expenditures. Candidates therefore rely intensely on the donations from their supporters and interest groups. Based on the importance of campaign donations, this paper focuses on how Congressmen candidates attract money from different Political Action Committee (PAC). In particular, we explore the influence of candidates' party affiliation, ideology, committee setting, seniority, gender, race and age. Since PAC's contribution is characterized as the censored data, we use Tobit model for the analysis.

Abstract

It is not surprise to see the parties and candidates in a democracy need the donations and fundraising to support the campaign activities and expenses. What is more important for a democratic country, to prevent the negative influence of money politics, is to make the regulation to legalize the transition of political contributions. In Taiwan, The Political Contribution Act was finally passed in March 2004 and started to implement for the legislative election in the end of same year. Based on the political contribution data collected for this election, this paper tries to find the factors that influencing the candidates to attract donations. In addition to several characters from the candidates themselves, including party affiliation, education and inclemency, this paper also finds district matters. Since the contribution data in Taiwan is featured with two-tail truncated distribution, Two-Limit Tobit is applied for the analysis.

Abstract

In order to encourage citizens to participate in politics, Japan adopted the ”Political Funds Control Act” in 1948 to regulate political finance. Due to prevailing pork-barrel politics, the ”Political Funds Control Act” has been modified several times. However, it still fails to ameliorate the situation of growing political funds. As a result, this study attempts to examine the interactive relationship between institutions and actors. And provide empirical evidence for the effect of institutional change on regulation of political finance using data from the political fund financial report. This study finds that the more restrictive regulation of political funds contributes to increase, rather than decrease, of political finance. Furthermore, the modification of the ”Political Funds Control Act” also changes the way that enterprises and organizations use for political donations.

Abstract

Disclosure is the most important means by which citizens in a democracy obtain information about money in electoral politics, and as such, the efficacy of the political finance disclosure determines, to a significant extent, what and how much we know about the actual workings of a political finance system. This study assesses political finance disclosure in Taiwan. While recognizing that sanctions against false disclosure are bound to be under-enforced, this study argues that loopholes in the coverage of the disclosure rules are the main culprits for the “dark money” in Taiwan politics. This study calls for a structural overhaul of the existing regime, the institutional performance of which is seriously hindered by a conventional misunderstanding of the purpose of political finance disclosure. In addition to tracking transactions of political finance at the retail level for the sake of informing voters and enforcing other rules governing political finance, an effective disclosure regime should strive to provide citizens with information about macro-political finance.