Vol. 19 · No. 1 · Issue 58 · Spring 2001 · pp. 1-36 (36)

Peter Pulzer

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Abstract

Public financing of elections means no more Watergates.
— Senator Edward Kennedy

The financing of parties by the state … is a cancer that has hitherto been restricted to Central and South America.
— Hermann Schmitt-Vockenhausen (SPD), 15 April 1964

Votes count," Stein Rokkan asserted many years ago, "but resources decide." Political finance is one of the many arenas in which Alexander and Shiratori's "conflict between real inequalities in economic resources and idealized equalities in political resources" is fought out. Yet the battleground is more complex than either of these authorities suggests. Votes are also a resource. They legitimate, and they can also punish, if those who cast them think that economic resources are being used unreasonably. Above all, the determination of electoral outcomes involves players others than voters and moneyed interests. In almost all modern democracies there are referees of varying effectiveness. In general, the referee is "the state," but much depends on the organs through which the state operates. Governments are not necessarily neutral agents; they and the parliaments that legislate on the regulation of political finance may merely reflect the interests of dominant or established parties. Political finance can, however, also be regulated, as for instance in Germany or the United States, by judicial review. In addition the media almost everywhere play an unpredictable role as spectator, watchdog or interested participant. In view of these complexities, it is not surprising that the jury is still out on the causal connection between money and votes and on the effectiveness of attempts to regulate the relationship between them. This paper attempts to trace the evolution of these twin processes in Germany, with reference, where relevant, to the experience of other countries.