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In France and Belgium the total amount of money you can spend on your campaign is regulated and financed by the state. Which of course leads to another kind of

In France and Belgium the total amount of money you can spend on your campaign is regulated and financed by the state. Which of course leads to another kind of problems.

emn13 11y ago
Such as? I'd say that's the bare minimum starting point for something that deserves the name democracy. That doesn't mean it's a panacea.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  On the top of my head: - Some parties/candidates spend more than they are allowed and try to hide the difference and that can only be done illegally (See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10858124/Marine-Le-Pen-wins-record-victory-in-French-elections.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1085...). - Also there can be some voting(?) threshold you have to reach to be eligible for the reimbursement of campaign costs (5% for the french presidential I believe) so small parties are gambling a lot by throwing themselves into the pit with other well established big parties and sometimes they simply decide to make a coalition in order to have the guarantee to survive financially. But then they are forced to reframe their political agenda and this usually weakens the ideological stances of everyone. - I think you have to submit every spending and justify the origin of the money private donors give you. Except when they can't because that money was obtained in shady places (See the Gaddafi-Sarkozy affair http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22220272 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22220272 or the Sarkozy-Bettencourt affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettencourt_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettencourt_affair). Of course I am not blaming the system. But at the moment the implementation lacks several error catching checks to make sure the whole thing runs as intended (eg: the official/national organ that is supposed to investigate these campaigns and make sure everything stays legal is largely under funded). I gave some notorious examples from right parties but it doesn't mean the left doesn't dabble into those waters (in France and in Belgium).
  - davidivadavid 11y ago
    That still leaves a little bit of an issue: taxpayers financing campaigns for parties they will never vote for. As a French citizen, I can't figure out a good reason why I have to give a cent to some nutjobs just because they woke up one morning and decided they were fit to rule the country (Jacques Cheminade, far left/right leaders, etc.).
gozur88 11y ago
How do you deal with third parties? In the US every time we try to limit what politicians can spend, the money goes instead to "independent" single-issue groups.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  In Belgium there are enough parties that not a single one can grasp 51% of the votes. Moreover since the country consists of two linguistic communities with their own set of different parties (there isn't any national, translinguistic parties anymore) there is always the need for build a « coalition » or a « majority » between parties that then form a government. edit: in Belgium we don't have a presidential body. We vote for the federal parliament, parties gather together to see who's going to ally with who to reach a majority and then those parties build a government by picking up ministers from their rank. If during the legislature a party should break away from that majority in the parliament then the government would fall and there would need to either form a new majority or call for anticipated elections. (that's a gross approximation of the legislative process) The situation is more contrasted and antagonistic in France where the left (PS: Socialist Party) and the right (LR: The republicans) are so huge they don't share the power (at least in the government). In Belgium we can have left and right ministers at the same time depending on which party entered the coalition. In France the government is basically either from the right or the left. The parliament is more nuanced. Both countries have a senate with elected members (who make up groups as well). I don't know if it answers your question though.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    I see I wasn't clear. When I said third parties, I didn't mean political parties, I meant it in the more literal sense. That is, groups that aren't technically affiliated with a political party. In the US you can't always tell what the group is by the name, e.g. "People for a Better Tomorrow" or "Alliance for Children" or "People Who Care More Than You". Well, okay, I made the last one up, but only just. Anyway, when you limit money going to politicians it goes to these sorts of groups instead. Then they turn around and buy air time supporting whoever funded them. If you limit money to those groups (which isn't constitutional anyway), you get money supporting dubious university research and "think tanks". And so on. If all those are limited, people start buying media organizations. The point being it doesn't seem like there's any way to remove or even curtail the influence of money in politics. All they can seem to do is move it around. That's why I'm curious what sort of legal environment Belgium has in place to prevent that.

In France and Belgium the total amount of money you can spend on your campaign is regulated and financed by the state. Which of course leads to another kind of problems.

emn13 11y ago

Such as? I'd say that's the bare minimum starting point for something that deserves the name democracy. That doesn't mean it's a panacea.

johnchristopher 11y ago
On the top of my head: - Some parties/candidates spend more than they are allowed and try to hide the difference and that can only be done illegally (See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10858124/Marine-Le-Pen-wins-record-victory-in-French-elections.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1085...). - Also there can be some voting(?) threshold you have to reach to be eligible for the reimbursement of campaign costs (5% for the french presidential I believe) so small parties are gambling a lot by throwing themselves into the pit with other well established big parties and sometimes they simply decide to make a coalition in order to have the guarantee to survive financially. But then they are forced to reframe their political agenda and this usually weakens the ideological stances of everyone. - I think you have to submit every spending and justify the origin of the money private donors give you. Except when they can't because that money was obtained in shady places (See the Gaddafi-Sarkozy affair http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22220272 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22220272 or the Sarkozy-Bettencourt affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettencourt_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettencourt_affair). Of course I am not blaming the system. But at the moment the implementation lacks several error catching checks to make sure the whole thing runs as intended (eg: the official/national organ that is supposed to investigate these campaigns and make sure everything stays legal is largely under funded). I gave some notorious examples from right parties but it doesn't mean the left doesn't dabble into those waters (in France and in Belgium).
- davidivadavid 11y ago
  That still leaves a little bit of an issue: taxpayers financing campaigns for parties they will never vote for. As a French citizen, I can't figure out a good reason why I have to give a cent to some nutjobs just because they woke up one morning and decided they were fit to rule the country (Jacques Cheminade, far left/right leaders, etc.).

gozur88 11y ago

How do you deal with third parties? In the US every time we try to limit what politicians can spend, the money goes instead to "independent" single-issue groups.

johnchristopher 11y ago
In Belgium there are enough parties that not a single one can grasp 51% of the votes. Moreover since the country consists of two linguistic communities with their own set of different parties (there isn't any national, translinguistic parties anymore) there is always the need for build a « coalition » or a « majority » between parties that then form a government. edit: in Belgium we don't have a presidential body. We vote for the federal parliament, parties gather together to see who's going to ally with who to reach a majority and then those parties build a government by picking up ministers from their rank. If during the legislature a party should break away from that majority in the parliament then the government would fall and there would need to either form a new majority or call for anticipated elections. (that's a gross approximation of the legislative process) The situation is more contrasted and antagonistic in France where the left (PS: Socialist Party) and the right (LR: The republicans) are so huge they don't share the power (at least in the government). In Belgium we can have left and right ministers at the same time depending on which party entered the coalition. In France the government is basically either from the right or the left. The parliament is more nuanced. Both countries have a senate with elected members (who make up groups as well). I don't know if it answers your question though.
- gozur88 11y ago
  I see I wasn't clear. When I said third parties, I didn't mean political parties, I meant it in the more literal sense. That is, groups that aren't technically affiliated with a political party. In the US you can't always tell what the group is by the name, e.g. "People for a Better Tomorrow" or "Alliance for Children" or "People Who Care More Than You". Well, okay, I made the last one up, but only just. Anyway, when you limit money going to politicians it goes to these sorts of groups instead. Then they turn around and buy air time supporting whoever funded them. If you limit money to those groups (which isn't constitutional anyway), you get money supporting dubious university research and "think tanks". And so on. If all those are limited, people start buying media organizations. The point being it doesn't seem like there's any way to remove or even curtail the influence of money in politics. All they can seem to do is move it around. That's why I'm curious what sort of legal environment Belgium has in place to prevent that.