The question about the role of money in politics has received significant attention in scholarly research and there is consensus that funding distribution rules, as well as funding caps, have an important effect on party system size. Something that we know much less about is the effect on political finance, both public and private, on internal party democracy and in particular on the gender balance of parliamentary represented political parties. How do rules on public and private funding affect the gender constellation of parliamentary parties? This paper proposes, that restrictive political finance rules, while said to be good for party competition at the system level, have an adverse effect for internal party democracy and in particular for gender equality within parties. We test this proposition with electoral data from 10 Central and East European states from 1990-2018.
