This paper explores the patterns of party funding in contemporary European democracies, focusing primarily on the party as the unit of analysis. We examine, first, the extent to which parties depend on public funding, as opposed to private donations and membership fees, as their source of income. We then explore the differences in patterns of party funding between party families, between old and new parties, and between parties in old and new European democracies. We also examine whether particular party funding patterns are associated with different size of parties. The final part of the paper tests the hypothesis linking dependence of political parties on public sources of funding with their higher degree of internal centralization. The paper is based on data obtained from the new PPDB database.
