The Digitalisation of Parties’ Finances: Fundraising and Spending

Abstract

In the ongoing debate on the digitalisation of political parties, party financing has been somehow neglected and especially centred on electoral campaigning. We distinguish two broad domains for the digitalisation of finances. On the one hand, digital fundraising, includes innovative processes, systems, and tools for raising money both for electoral campaigns but also for funding the party’s internal processes and initiatives. On the other hand, digital spending, as the migration to digital implies certain costs. Accordingly, parties may spend a changing amount of their resources for software, webspace, security, developing digital infrastructures, training, or staff, among others. We can hypothesise that both dimensions of digital finances are very context-related, as national regulations provide and allow different sources and amounts of public and private funding, but also very party dependent, including factors such as type of party, size, ideology, year of foundation or governmental status. Finally, the different digital possibilities and fast-changing nature of digitalisation, may be at odds with specific country regulations, that may struggle to adapt to new forms of financing. In certain cases, it might be even more useful to keep party finances completely offline. Thus, this panel aims to address the digitalisation of parties’ finances in a broad sense, including external and internal dynamics, fundraising and spending. This panel welcomes case studies or comparative papers tackling: - Innovative digital ways for financing electoral campaigns (such as crowdfunding, microcredits, etc.). - Digital fundraising for internal processes (Congress’ organisation, paying the membership quota, funding specific actions, etc.). - Parties’ digital spending and investing on internal digital infrastructure, including the development of online platforms, software, digital security, etc. - Regulation of party digital financing and the publication of financial reports, including normative issues

Title	Details
Pawn or King : Does Political Candidates' Use of Twitter Tell us Anything About the Likelihood of Electoral Success for Political Parties?	View Paper Details
Back to the Ground. But which is the Ground? Modernizing strategies of financing and the legitimacy bases of political parties in western Europe.	View Paper Details
Primary elections in Spain, an overview of the performance of Spanish political parties	View Paper Details
Innovating in party financing: Digital microcredits in Spanish Podemos and PSOE	View Paper Details
Online fundraising in Italy. Anticipating a trend?	View Paper Details