Prohibit or permit? Foreign donations and their effect on electoral competitiveness

Campaign finance is an extremely important issue, especially in regard of electoral integrity, given the almost insatiable demand for resources in contemporary political campaigns. One of the important preconditions for democratic competition is that the rules must ensure the greatest possible equality of opportunity for the competing parties, and it is therefore the task of the state regulating and conducting the competition to maintain, ensure and monitor this equality of opportunity in some way. In addition to equal opportunities, another important aspect is that democratic will shall be formed within the democratic community, without external influence. Foreign funding is therefore banned or very heavily restricted by most states - democracies and electoral autocracies alike try to prevent foreign governments from gaining political influence in the country through campaign finance channels. The paper examines the general criteria and specific factors that countries adopt to prohibit or permit foreign funding and how this affects electoral competitiveness in those countries. To this end, I implement the two main categories of competition law, the concepts of cartel and economic dominance, into the research. Using concrete examples (USA, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, Russia), I examine the extent to which campaign rules on foreign donations follow these two principles (prohibition of abuse of economic dominance, prohibition of cartels) and the differences between democracies and non-democracies. In addition to legislative and executive elections, the paper also examines referendum campaigns, i.e. all national elections.