Costs of Democracy Political Finance in India

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About the Database

Exercise you have a question about this database? Send u.s.a. an e-mail: politicalfinancedb@idea.int

OVERVIEW

International Thought's Political Finance Database is the leading global resources of comparative political finance data for those interested in coin in politics and has been since its launch in 2003.

The Database provides answers to central questions on political finance within four broad categories: a) Bans and Limits on Private Income, b) Public Funding, c) Regulations on Spending d) Reporting, Oversight and Sanctions. The Database provides land-specific information, which can be viewed for a single country or comparatively, allowing the user to view the prevalence of different regulations and provisions between countries and regions, also as customize their search and download the data. Information technology is our intention that the database is used by all who are interested in how money in politics is regulated, but in particular legislators, regulators, political party officials, civil gild activists, journalists, researchers, and concerned citizens.

The political finance landscape is increasingly complex and continuously evolving. The database questions were revised to capture this reality in 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020 and most recently in 2022. In 2018, the database also included data apropos the practical implementations of political finance, which made the questions 74 in total. However, systematically tracking and administering applied information proved less reliable, and then since 2020, these questions have been removed from the database. The number of research questions is now 58.

Throughout the 2021-22 update, 60 countries have been updated. These include countries that take been updated with 2021 datasets, i.e. featuring changes that took place earlier the finish of December 2021, but likewise countries that needed to be reviewed to improve the accuracy of the data. The countries updated are done and then based on internal reviews and suggestions from regional and national experts. For countries which were not updated in this round, the 2019 data reverberate the latest changes. It is likely that we may take missed updates that took place in some countries; if yous are aware of whatsoever such country, please let us know and we volition expect into it carefully.

The Political Finance Database is a repository of political finance regulations. As with many areas of public policy, the passing of a law does not automatically bring compliance. Globally, scandals regarding coin and politics illustrate that laws are breached, and loopholes exploited. In other situations, governments may ignore or abuse regulations to farther their own interests. These facts do not negate the value of collecting the global political finance regulations, it simply ways that nosotros cannot assume that these provisions are adhered to or enforced in a manner nosotros might anticipate. Without regulations, there is zip to attach to or enforce; these provisions nowadays the natural starting point for any report of money in politics.

Please annotation that the database is updated based on trusted open sources and to the best of our knowledge. Every bit the earth of political finance is one in constant motion, we cannot e'er guarantee that the data is completely error-costless. Users are always welcome to brand suggestions or enhance concerns regarding the data past sending an email to politicalfinancedb@idea.int.

ane. Bans and limits on private income

The commencement section looks at bans on who tin can contribute to political parties and candidates and how these donations are limited.

2. Public funding

The second section covers the provision of direct and indirect public funding available to political parties and candidates.

three. Regulations on spending

The 3rd department deals with the rules for how much and on what political parties and candidates can spend money.

4. Reporting, oversight, and sanctions

The fourth section addresses the requirements for financial reporting, oversight of political finance regulations and the sanctions that are available for breaches.

GLOSSARY

Abuse of state resource

The use of state and public sector powers and resources by incumbent politicians or political parties to further their own prospects of election, in violation of legal and/or other norms and responsibilities governing the do of public part.

Resource allotment calculation

Deals on how public funding is distributed between those that have a right to receive it. Ways of calculating how public funding should be provided could be: either equally to all eligible political parties, or in proportion to, for example, seats or votes won. Most common is a combination of the two.

Bearding donations

Support, contributions or donations to political parties and/or candidates where the identity of the donor or correspondent is not disclosed.

Auditing agency

The trunk responsible for reviewing the political parties and/or candidates' financial statements declaring their income, expenditure and assets and to monitor their accounts. Such fiscal reports are often submitted to the auditing agency on an annual basis or specifically in relation to the electoral entrada.

Ban on contributions

A prohibition to limit the influx of money or other types of support given a candidate'southward campaign or political party by an individual or an system.

Entrada finance

Financial transactions, to political parties or candidates, related to an electoral campaign which could include formal, financial, or in-kind donations or expenditures.

Contribution limit

A maximum amount of coin that an private, organisation or political party may contribute to a candidate'south campaign or to a political party annually or per election period.

Corporate donations

Back up, contributions or donations to political parties and/or candidates from entities such as corporations, companies and/or business enterprises.

Direct Public Funding

Authorities provision of money or subsidies to political parties or candidates during election campaigns or for regular party financing.

Disclosure

The obligation that political parties and candidates must provide certain financial information, submit reports or make fiscal statements regularly (frequently annually) or in relation to an election campaign. Reports should exist submitted to the relevant body which ofttimes is the balloter direction body, government auditing bureau or electoral enforcement agency. The disclosure sometimes includes the requirement of revealing the identity of the donors.

Donations/contributions

A gift taking various forms such every bit cash, services or anything else of value given from an individual or an organization with the purpose of supporting a certain political political party or candidate.

Earmarking

A provision that direct public funding provided to political parties must simply exist used for certain purposes such as for election campaign purposes; ongoing political party activities (administration, public awareness campaigns, policy platform development, voter interaction or membership drives) or for the utilise of particular institutions inside political parties, such equally youth or women's wings or research/policy institutions within parties.

Balloter campaign menstruum

A specified period of fourth dimension during which official campaigning is regulated.

Eligibility

The right of political parties (and in some cases candidates) to the provision of straight public funding based on criteria such every bit having representation in an elected body; winning a certain share of votes in the previous or in the adjacent election; holding a sure share of seats in parliament won either in the previous or in the next election; based on the number of candidates presented by the party (in the preceding or forthcoming election). The criteria often include a certain percentage that must be fulfilled.

Enforcement agency

The controlling trunk in charge of monitoring that political parties and candidates human action in compliance with the financial legislation in place. The responsible agency could exist the national Electoral Direction Torso, a specially created body or a government department.

Enhanced due diligence

Enhanced due diligence are requirements for banks and fiscal institutions to use "policies, procedures, and processes for obtaining customer information and appraise the value of this information in detecting, monitoring, and reporting suspicious activeness", going beyond regular provisions for due diligence. These are applied towards political actors to mitigate the risk of corrupt practices and money laundering.

Equitable playing field

Candidates competing for election have different abilities to fundraise and receive campaign contributions with which they volition run their campaigns. In order to level the playing field, the State can provide public funding and, furthermore, make information technology conditional.

Strange interests

In order to limit influence over national politics to forces inside the country, it is quite common to ban foreign interests from making donations to political parties. Amongst the entities prohibited to contribute directly or indirectly are governments, corporations, organizations or individuals who are not citizens; that practise not reside in the country or have a large share of foreign ownership.

Gender equality among candidates

Some countries apply fiscal measures in society to encourage and increment gender equality among candidates and within political parties in full general. This can include earmarking public funding to women's wings or for gender-related activities, or to reduce the nomination eolith required of women candidates.

Government contracts

Private companies that are providing goods, works or services to the government are potentially susceptible to corruption, and disharmonize of interests when donating to political parties.

Indirect Public Funding [including media]

Authorities provision of resources with a monetary value to political parties or candidates for the ballot campaign or for regular party financing, such as send, venues, free or subsidized media access to public or individual Goggle box, radio, newspaper or other media.

In-kind contributions

Non-financial donations provided in the form of goods and services, such as use of venues for events costless of charge, using vehicles or non-monetary gifts.

Itemized income

Parties are in some countries not only required to disclose their general income as a total corporeality but also in more particular, listing the amounts received from specific sources allowing more insight into their funding.

Itemized spending

Parties are in some countries not only required to disclose their general spending but as well in more particular, list the amounts spent on specific posts allowing for more insight into their activities.

Loophole

An ambiguity in the legal framework used to avoid or getting around laws and to exploit the system.

Monitoring

The systematic and objective ascertainment and documentation of fiscal action, i.due east. the supervision of donations to and expenditure of parties, in order to identify irregularities in financial flows.

Partial regime ownership

If a business organisation is partially endemic by the government, and were to donate to a political party, that would entail a clear conflict of interest and would be a growing ground for potential corruption.

Political finance

The concept encompasses all financial flows to and from political parties and candidates. It includes formal and informal income and expenditure, as well as financial and in-kind contributions. These transactions are non limited to a certain fourth dimension menstruum.

Political finance oversight

Theprocess of ensuring that political parties and candidates conduct themselves in line with the provisions of the legal framework. This may, for case, include receiving reports and investigating breaches, administering the provision of public funding, applying sanctions or hearing appeals.

Political party expenditures

The overall spending by political parties on political political party activities and ballot campaigns.

Private donations

Financial contributions from individuals funding the activities of the political party, the candidate and the electoral campaign.

Public funding

A system where monetary assistance is provided by the regime to qualified political parties or candidates for their campaigns or regular party activities.

Public tender/public procurement

Government procurement of goods, works and services constitute one of the most corruption sensitive areas of authorities. A large percentage of land funds are put into public procurement and therefore opens up opportunities for personal enrichment and establish an expanse wherein business organisation interests may offer bribes to gain advantages over their competitors.

Regular party funding

Non-campaign related finances, including donations and expenditure, of political parties, organizations and associations spent on an annual basis to maintain routine party operations.

Sanctions

Penalties in cases of financial misconduct of a party subject to the regulation. Actions such every bit irregularities in financial reporting, non-compliance with financial reporting regulation, improper utilise of public funds may issue in either criminal or administrative sanctions including the loss of funds for the party, administrative fines or deregistration.

Spending limits

A maximum amount that a party or a candidate tin spend during the balloter campaign period or during a defined menstruation of time; for instance per constituency or per voter. The limit on expenditures sometimes also covers third party expenditures which refer to expenditure incurred on behalf of a political political party or candidate by a different entity.

State resources

Resources and powers belonging to the public sector including personnel, financial, fabric, venues, vehicles, materials and other resources.

Third-party spending

In many elections, not only political parties and candidates spend money trying to get elected – other actors (third parties) may produce and run tv-commercials, put upwardly billboards and in various ways endeavor to support a given candidate or party that aligns with their interests.

Vote buying

A form of political swindling that is intended to increase the number of votes a particular candidate or political party receives in an election by providing money or other benefits to constituents in exchange for their vote.

METHODOLOGY

Developing the questions

Following a review of the previous International Thought database on political finance, an skillful grouping provided communication on the development of a new set up of questions and gave guidance on the projection's management. The questions added in the 2018 update were thus meant to outline a wider integrity-enhanced approach to addressing corruption within a given country, region and continent, but take since been dismantled due to complications in data-collection.

The database at present includes in total 15 additional questions to the original 43 research questions. This provides a more than holistic overview of the role of money in politics. To further ensure its relevance, we sought internal and external input to the procedure, including from an skillful-level coming together with relevant actors in the field held at International IDEA. This is was further supplemented with continuous internal monitoring of changes inside the field.

Countries included

To capture a wide range of political finance regulations in the database, we decided to just exclude countries that fell into one or more than of the below categories:

Political parties are de jure not allowed to be (legally banned)
No elections take been held during the final 30 years

This left united states with 180 countries. Despite the quantity, and in some cases the complexity of questions, the response rate was high with substantive answers from all countries.

Answering the questions

For the 2022 update, over twenty researchers from unlike institutions, as well equally independent researchers from around the world were provided with coding instructions and asked to answer each of the 58 questions. A comprehensive collection of more than 500 laws, reports and other documents was nerveless. Their dedication has been indispensable for the update of the database, for which International IDEA is very grateful. Please look at the Acknowledgement department for a more than detailed presentation of all parties involved.

Verifying the answers

A group of experts assisted by verifying the recorded answers and suggesting changes or additions wherever possible. While not all the state data was verified in this manner, this process significantly increased the reliability of the data. We hope that users of the database volition also assist us by leaving feedback regarding any wrong or missing data (encounter further below). Nosotros cannot guarantee that the 11,000+ answers are entirely error-free. We apologize for any inaccuracies.

Sources

Provisions relating to the financing of political parties are sometimes establish in laws other than balloter or political party legislation. This tin can make it difficult to find all of the legal provisions regulating political finance. Some may exist found in tax laws, special laws governing the operation of political parties, or laws relating to the media, private companies, trade unions or other bodies. Furthermore, provisions may be plant in decrees, subsidiary legislation or regulations.

Nosotros asked researchers primarily to use legislation from each country. If relevant legislation could not be establish, written sources such every bit election reports or political analyses were sought. For some regions, organizations focusing on campaign finance accept provided much relevant information for a number of countries, such as the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) and the Balloter Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA). Experts from various countries such equally electoral direction torso (EMB) officials, academics or independent observers as well assisted researchers in finding relevant information. The sources used in the database are listed under relevant questions.

Interpreting the absence of information

Ane problem with collecting and coding information of this kind is that if a certain provision does not exist in a country, it may be difficult to discover other relevant information. For case, if a land does not use public funding of political parties, it is very unlikely that this is stated in legislation (information technology will be the result of an absence of rules regarding such funding). Deciding to automatically exclude cases where explicit information could not be found would have created a bias in the answers, equally almost countries where such provisions do not be would be coded as "no information", and only countries where such provisions exist would be coded at all. There is, in other words, an asymmetry in how many provisions are included in legislation—if they exist in that location will exist a straight reference whereas if they do non be no mention of the result will be included in the law.

In such cases, the researchers were instructed to seek other sources that could provide information (such every bit election observation reports, analyses of the political party state of affairs in a country or input from an proficient). In cases where confirmation of the absence of a provision could not exist found from other sources, a sentence was made regarding the likelihood that the issue could exist governed in regulatory documents not attainable to the researcher. Where the researcher had access to the relevant balloter and political political party legislation and did non find whatever references to other legislation or similar documents that may be pertinent, they were instructed to respond "no" to questions regarding provisions not mentioned in any of these sources. For some questions where it is likely that provisions may exist in other legislation than that related to elections or political parties, these cases are coded as "no data". We believe that this is the best approach to dealing with the issue of non-regulation. Please refer to the Coding Instructions for more information.

How to interpret the answers in the database

In a database covering over 180 countries with more than 11,000 private answers, it is incommunicable to capture all the nuances that may be in the regulations in a given country. For example, at that place may be different rules for different types of candidates, or about political parties in dissimilar regions of the same country (the focus of the answers is on national level regulations).

The questions have, in most cases been worded as "Is there a ban on..." or "Are there provisions for...". These questions have been answered "yes" if there are whatever cases of bans or provisions, even if these are simply limited in scope. For example, if in that location is a ban on corporate donations to Presidential but non to Parliamentary candidates, the question has been answered "yes", with details provided under "comments" (click on whatsoever answer to meet these). The quotes provided for the answers volition, in many cases provide boosted information well-nigh the regulatory situation in each country.

Keeping the database up to appointment

With such a mass of data, a major challenge becomes how to keep rail of legislative and other changes that will necessitate differences in how questions accept been answered. International Thought intends to carry regular updates of the database, but in the meantime, nosotros welcome any suggestions for updates or corrections, or to add together missing data. For each reply in the database, at that place is an opportunity for users to brand such suggestions, and International IDEA volition consider each carefully.

QUESTIONS OVERVIEW

Bans and limits on individual income

This section (questions 1-27) covers regulations that restrict who is allowed to contribute to political parties or candidates and the amount that a donor can contribute. These regulations are designed to prevent undesirable actors from unduly influencing the political sphere.

Questions 1-12 cover bans on donations from sure sources including foreign donors, corporate donors, trade unions, companies with partial authorities ownership or government contracts, and anonymous sources.

Question 13 comprehend bans on abuse of state resource.

Questions 14-22 embrace caps on bodily donations and in-kind donations to political parties and candidates, in-kind donations.

Questions 23-27 cover restrictions on political parties and candidates in relation to their commercial activities, taking loans and participating in public procurement processes.

Public funding

This section (questions 28-37) covers the provision of directly and indirect public funding to political parties and candidates. Advocates of public funding argue such measures can annul the negative influence of private money in politics, assistance to strengthen the capacity of political parties and level the electoral playing field.

Questions 38–31 encompass whether straight public funding exists, and if so what the eligibility and allotment criteria are and whether there are provisions for how such funds should be used.

Questions 32–35 encompass the provision of free or subsidized media access to political parties and candidates, and if any other forms of public funding are provided.

Questions 36–37 ask if financial incentives are provided to promote gender equality among candidates.

Regulations on spending

This section (questions 38-46)covers rules on the amount and type of expenditure political parties and candidates can make. These rules seek to curb undesirable spending, to decrease the reward of those with access to significant resources, and to reduce overall spending on election campaigns.

Questions 38-43 address bans on vote buying and spending limits by political parties, candidates and third parties.

Questions 44-46 cover spending limits on media advertisements.

Reporting, oversight and sanctions

This department (questions 47-58) addresses the requirements for financial reporting, oversight of political finance regulations and bachelor sanctions. Without effective disclosure and monitoring, transparency cannot be achieved, and it is unlikely that political actors will respect rules such every bit contribution bans and spending limits.

Questions 47-54 cover issues of fiscal reporting by political parties and candidates, as well as whether such reports must include itemized information, disclose private donors' information and if they are required to be made public.

Questions 55-58 cover the mandates on institution(s) that receive financial reports, investigate potential breaches or other responsibilities in relation to political finance oversight and asset disclosure.

FAQ

If public funds are given to parliamentary caucuses or MPs' salaries, have you interpreted that as straight or indirect public funding?

Answer: Most definitions of straight public funding only include actress-parliamentary support. i.e. funds exclusively to support parliamentary party groups (travel allowances etc.) and not MPs' salaries. If this is the but available form of land public funding, we take answered "no" to Q30 about straight public funding. For more information pertaining to other types of indirect funding, please become to question 37.

What if I find information that a regulation is not implemented?

Answer: This is a database focusing on the formal regulations in unlike countries, not on bodily implementation. This means that, when answering the questions, the formal rules should be followed. If you find information that contribution limits are routinely ignored or that public funding has been distributed on an ad hoc ground, the answer should still be based on the formal regulation.

Where tin I go out information that is not question-specific nearly the Political Finance Database?

Respond: Only email us if annihilation like this arises: politicalfinancedb@idea.int .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR 2022

International Idea would similar to thank all those who have participated in the Political Finance Database project for their hard piece of work making the database the globe'due south chief resource on political party and candidate finance regulations, providing expertise and pulling together all the resources making information technology comprehensive.

For the 2022 Political Finance Database update, the co-ordination and finalisation of the database was led by Khushbu Agrawal, Program Officer, with guidance from Yukihiko Hamada, Programme Manager. With valuable inputs from IDEA's regional programmes, the data cleaning, follow-up inquiry, and administrative tasks were carried out by members of Thought'due south Electoral Processes Team; Thomas Bolding, Ida Hedenskog, Tendai Chinamora-Jönsson, and Jenefrieda Isberg.

Special thanks get to the following institutions and experts who conducted thorough data collection and review for the database:

Poder Ciudadano

Pablo Secchi

Karina Kalpschtrej

University of Nottingham, Great britain

Anastasia Griadasova

Bat-Orgil Altankhuyag

Bohdan Bernatskyi

Christine Kim

Fernando Casal Bertoa

Hakan Yavuzyilmaz

Harout Manougian

Ines Stasa

Naheed Goraya

Salome Mukhuradze

Teodora Yovcheva

Yen Pivot Su

Contained Researchers

Ana Neyra

Antonio Greco

Barbara Jouan Stonestreet

Henry Muguzi

Imen Nefzaoui

Nilesh Lal

Prof. Ömer Gençkaya

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