Political Parties and Corruption: Legal Responses and Accountability Mechanisms

Abstract

Political parties are perceived as the most corrupt institutions worldwide, a fact reflected in low levels of trust in national governments and parliaments. This is particularly troubling as it challenges the very core of representative democracy. This panel focuses on the issues related to corrupt behaviour of political parties and related legal prevention and other accountability mechanisms. An important part of this panel focuses on the corrupt practices of political parties such as undue influence and nexus between business and politics, abuse of state resources, party crime, party patronage, clientelism, and vote-buying. The panel also invites conceptual papers defining and discussing the inter-relatedness and overlapping of these terms and different manifestations of corrupt behaviour of political parties. Further to that, the aim of the panel is also to explore what are the possible responses to these corrupt practices of political parties and related challenges. This is a particularly interesting aspect since political parties are, as governors, involved in designing the legal environment in which they operate. Some of the questions that will be addressed include: What are the accountability mechanisms in curbing party corruption and what is their impact? And more particularly: How political financing regulations affect corrupt behaviour of political parties? What oversight and monitoring mechanisms are in place to detect party corruption? What is the role of prosecution of political parties and leaders in curbing party corruption? How do political parties fare within the criminal legal system and what does the study of their criminal liability tell us?

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