Second-Order Elections, but also ‘Low-Cost’ Campaigns? National Parties and Campaign Spending in European Elections: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

This article provides an innovative empirical contribution to the understudied question of party spending in EU election campaigns through a comparison between the cases of France and Spain between 1994 and 2009 (and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain and Ireland). It shows that mainstream parties have become increasingly more reliant on state funding in EU elections as compared with national campaigns. It also illustrates that mainstream parties have restricted or even limited the resources that they have been willing to mobilise in EU election campaigns, a trend that contrasts with minor parties and with the ever-increasing expenditure that characterises national elections. National parties have also limited the expenditure related to public communication activities in EU elections, while most spending has been devoted to routine administration costs. Overall, the weak and even sometimes declining financial mobilisations of the relevant party organisations in European campaigns can throw new light on the persistent ‘second-order’ national character of EU elections.

Key Words:

• European elections
• campaign spending
• party finance
• political competition

Acknowledgements

I especially wish to thank Peter Mair, Stefano Bartolini, Alexander Trechsel, Florence Haegel and Robert Ladrech for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, as well as Cameron Ross and the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

  ¹ France Info, 7 May 2009; The Economist, 8 June 2009.

  ² They spent 45 million euros in the regional election, 35 million euros in the local campaign and only 32 million euros in the 2004 EU election (CNCCFP 2005, p. 14).

  ³ While data is relatively accessible on parties' yearly financial situations in the four cases (in Great Britain, for instance, since the 1970s), it remains much rarer and disparate for the electoral campaigns themselves.

  ⁴ In Great Britain and Ireland, where the funding of parties and campaigns depends mostly on private funds, it is not possible to obtain official data on the origins and distribution of the incomes of parties in EU election campaigns.

  ⁵ In France, in the 1994 EU elections, public subsidies were directly provided to the candidates, so that the two categories were merged. Candidates could contract public loans to finance their own campaigns. Since 1999, public subsidies are provided to the party directions that potentially redistribute part of the money to their local candidates.

  ⁶ The CNCCFP distinguishes eleven categories of financial incomes that have been regrouped as follows: 1. ‘dons des personnes physiques’ (donations); 2. ‘versements définitifs des partis politiques’ and ‘dépenses payées directement par le parti politique’ (national party contributions); 3. ‘matériels’, ‘avantages en nature’, ‘ventes diverses’, ‘produits divers’ and ‘produits financiers’ (material advantages and others); 4. ‘versement personnels du candidat au mandataire’ and ‘dépenses payées directement par le candidat’ (candidates’ contributions); and 5. ‘financement public et emprunts’ (public subsidies).

  ⁷ While I have considered general elections as the domestic points of reference in Spain, it seems wise to focus on presidential elections in the case of France, given that they constitute the ‘cornerstone’ of the French semi-presidential system.

  ⁸ In the case of Spain, six categories of income are provided by the Tribunal de las Cuentas: 1. ‘aportaciones de personas fisicas o jurídicas’ (individual donations); 2. ‘aportaciones del partido’ (party contributions); 3. ‘operaciones de endeudamiento personal’ (private loans organised by the candidates to finance their own campaigns); 4. ‘anticipos de la administración’ (state funding granted to the parties before the election); 5. ‘ingresos financieros’; and 6. ‘otros ingresos’ (financial and other material resources).

  ⁹ The CNCCFP does not provide data on the distribution of incomes by parties, but only distinguishes the three dominant parties from the others, a distinction that has been used for comparison with the Spanish case. While the ‘main parties’ categories regroup the average distribution of incomes of the most relevant parties of the French (Parti Socialiste, Union pour la Démocratie Française, Rassemblement pour la République) and the Spanish party systems (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Partido Popular), the ‘minor parties’ categories include peripheral parties (Lutte Ouvrière-Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (now Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste), Parti Communiste, Les Verts, Front National in France and Izquierda Unida, Convergència i Unio, Partido Nacionalista Vasco and Europa de los Pueblos in Spain).

¹⁰ The data only consider the same number of relevant parties (mainstream and parties with a blackmail potential) in national as well as EU election campaigns in France (LO-LCR, PCF, PS, Les Verts, UDF, RPR-UMP and FN), Spain (PSOE-PP, IU, CiU, PNV and Europa de los Pueblos), Ireland (Sinn Féin, Labour, Fine Gael, Fianna Faìl) and Great Britain (Labour, Liberals, Conservative, SNP, BNP and UKIP)

¹¹ In the case of France, the reports of the CNCCFP do not offer the campaign expenditures of each national party in EU election campaigns. These campaign expenditures are indeed diluted in the more general expenditures of each party for a given year.