Political Finance Models and the Normative Theory of Partisanship: Towards a Civic Model

Abstract This chapter applies the normative theory of partisanship to five different models of political finance (and their subtypes): public funding, private funding, dual-source funding, financing via a voucher scheme, and financing via an anonymous private donations scheme. This analysis reveals that the different political finance models examined have very different normative properties in terms of collegiality, systemic voice, and systemic accountability. Having evaluated the various party system types (Chapters 2 and 3) and political finance models (Chapter 4) against the normative dimensions of partisanship, we then draw together these lines of analysis to rank-order the different combinations of party system types and political finance models. We explain that the (expected) performance of a party system in terms of collegiality, systemic voice, and systemic accountability can be improved (where weak) or sustained (where already strong) via a complementary political finance arrangement, and identify the most compatible party system–political financing pairings.