Why Change the Rules of the Game? Factors Determining Success in Party Finance Transparency Reforms

Public oversight of political finance is one of the accountability measures that is deemed necessary to improve substantive representation of voters. This paper examines widely theorized causal mechanisms that lead to the introduction and revision of party finance transparency regulation. It does so in two steps. First, based on a cross-sectional comparison, we select an advanced European democracy with a typical relationship between citizens´ trust in political parties and national transparency regulation - Norway. Using process-tracing analysis, we investigate both successful and failed reform attempts in party finance transparency in this country. Secondly, benefiting from a coarsened exact matching, we conduct a quasi-experimental analysis of Norway and Switzerland, in order to test available theoretical approaches predicting the outcome of party finance transparency regulation reforms sparked by the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). The typical case study allows us to conclude that competing ideological preferences on the left-right dimension explain reforms in party finance transparency regulation most effectively. Left-leaning mainstream parties treat transparency of party finance as a strategy to attract voters and weaken political opponents, whereas right-leaning mainstream parties tend to hinder full transparency with the aim to keep their donors´ identities a secret. Interestingly, right-wing populist parties call for more public transparency and thus deviate from this pattern. We also find that policy diffusion can explain some reforms, but low trust in parties and increasing public subventions to parties are not sufficient factors to introduce reforms. The quasi-experimental set up demonstrates that the interaction between domestic factors favouring reforms, namely the tradition of party regulation, and high international reputational costs for non-compliance determine the success of party finance transparency reform. Overall, having systematically revealed factors and causal mechanisms explaining revision of party finance transparency reforms, we contribute to the emerging theory on changes in party finance regulation and suggest avenues for future research.