Campaign finance and perceptions of interest group influence in Australia

ABSTRACT

Comparative studies routinely demonstrate that Australia underperforms relative to other established democracies on measures of campaign finance integrity and the role of money in politics. Scandals relating to the influence of political donations have affected both major parties in recent elections, and record numbers of Australians believe that the government is run for a few big interests. Previous studies have focused on the problems of Australian political financing arrangements, and reforms at the state level, but little is known about public perceptions of the influence of money in politics in Australia. This paper examines these perceptions with data from the Australian Election Study covering elections from 1990 to 2016. Using multilevel modelling we investigate the role of election level and individual level characteristics on perceptions of the influence of major interest groups in Australian politics. We find that when the Liberal-National Coalition is in government, there is greater concern over the role of big interests in politics. At the individual level, we find that partisanship, ideology, being an electoral winner or loser, and economic evaluations affect citizens’ perceptions of interest group influence.

KEYWORDS:

• Campaign finance
• Australian politics
• corruption
• elections
• interest groups

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Electoral Integrity Project at the University of Sydney for supporting this work, in particular Pippa Norris and Megan Capriccio. For the data used in this article, we gratefully acknowledge the work of the collaborators on the 1987 to 2016 Australian Election Studies, led by Ian McAllister.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Australia was ranked 8th worldwide in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2017 Democracy Index (EIU, 2018).

2. The empirical evidence on this point is mixed, see for instance Sances (2013) and Avkiran, Kanol, and Oliver (2016).

3. Commonwealth Electoral Legislation Amendment Act 1983.

4. These 2006 changes saw an increase in the disclosure threshold from $1,500 to $10,000, indexed to the Consumer Price Index such that it is now in the vicinity of $13,800.

5. The exception was the National Australia Bank, which ceased donations in 2016 over concerns about perceived impropriety.

6. Electoral Reform and Accountability Act 2011.

7. The experiment was conducted with subjects from an Australian university.

8. See for an overview Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2007), Duch and Stevenson (2008), and Van der Brug, Van der Eijk, and Franklin (2007).

9. As voting is compulsory in Australia, the electoral roll captures over 96% of Australians (Australian Electoral Commission 2018b).

10. The 1987 Australian Election Study is excluded due to differences in question wording which mean the measures of key dependent variables cannot be considered comparable.

11. See Bryan and Jenkins (2015), Gelman (2006), Robson and Pevalin (2015, 26).

12. We compare a null multilevel model with a null single-level model, and find evidence of election level differences (see Robson and Pevalin 2015, Chapter, 2).

13. Liberal and National voters are considered electoral ‘winners’ when the Liberal-National Coalition formed a government. In 2010 when the Greens provided support to the Labor party to form a government, Labor and Greens voters were considered ‘winners’ in that year. Results are tested with and without the inclusion of the Greens as electoral ‘winners’ in 2010 and this does not affect the substantive interpretation of the results.

14. The variable for partisanship is on a continuum, which incorporates both party identification and strength of partisanship. It has been checked for linearity to confirm that the differences between strong and weak partisans are as expected.

15. Milyo and Primo (2017) for example, argue that the public is very uninformed regarding campaign finance.

16. See for an overview International IDEA (2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Cameron

Sarah Cameron is the Electoral Integrity Project Manager and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include elections, comparative political behaviour and Australian politics. She has contributed to a range of projects on elections and democracy including the Australian Election Study and the Comparative Cross-National Electoral Research project. She held a Visiting Fellowship in the Department of Government at Harvard University from 2015 to 2016. Cameron holds a PhD and Master of Studies from the Australian National University, and a Masters in Sustainability and Responsibility from Ashridge Business School.

Thomas Wynter

Thomas Wynter is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Harvard/Sydney Electoral Integrity Project and the Program Manager of the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity expert survey. Beyond elections, his research is predominantly in political psychology, spanning political rhetoric, fear of low-probability events, bias, and cooperation. He holds a PhD and Master of International Studies from the University of Sydney, and lectures in international security and research methods.