Project description
Does public money to political parties reduce political corruption?
European politics is periodically shaken by scandals in which large donations are given to political parties in return for the award of contracts. While regulations to prevent this phenomenon are in place in all Member States, it is uncertain whether political finance subsidies reduce corruption in politics. The EU-funded PFCorr project will study whether a high level of state subsidies can diminish political corruption. Specifically, it will use the actual data on state funding provided to political parties. Until now, comparative studies have exclusively used crude measures to estimate the effect of state subsidies on political corruption. By standardising the information on state funding to parties, PFCorr will compare its impact on corruption cross-nationally and over time. Combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, the project will explore this relationship for the post-communist regimes between 1990/1991 and 2018.
Objective
The chief normative assumption underpinning the provision of public funding to political parties holds that state funding aims to diminish their propensity to engage in corruption-prone exchanges through financing from illicit sources. Yet, the empirical testing of this supposition has received little attention from a comparative perspective. At best, existing comparative studies relied on very crude measures to estimate the effect of subsidies on political corruption.
This project will partially address this gap by using better measures of both explanatory and explained variables. Unlike existing research, which employs either composite indexes of various financing regulations or binary measures of public funding (i.e. the lack vs. the availability of state subsidies) to estimate the effect of state subsidies on corruption, this project embarks on a different path. It will use hard data on state funding provided to political parties, which will be standardized to make it comparable cross-nationally and over time. It will also employ alternative measures of political corruption (e.g. experience-based, public perception, text analysis), which do not rely exclusively on expert-based evaluations.
The analysis will be conducted using an original data-set on the de facto level of state funding, operationalised as the annual average of direct budgetary subventions per voter at the national level for 27 post-communist regimes between 1990/1991 until 2018. To estimate the direction and strength of the relationship between public funding and political corruption, as well as to explain the underlying causal mechanism, according to which a higher level of state subsidies is expected to diminish political corruption, this research will employ a mixed-method research design. It will combine quantitative (panel data models) and qualitative techniques (case-studies and paired comparison) as complementary methodological tools.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
You need to log in or register to use this function
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme -
H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019
See all projects funded under this callCoordinator
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
9 Dublin
Ireland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.