Authors: William Horncastle, (University of Birmingham), Toine Paulissen (KU Leuven)

The recent tendency in the field of political finance of focusing on how different countries regulate the role of money in election campaigns has created a clearer picture of cross-national similarities in regulatory patterns, which has consequently translated in scholars attempting to explain the effects of these regulations. Providing a systematic and clear understanding of campaign regulations is paramount in order to understand and assess their impact, as well as whether or not they deliver on their envisioned policy goals of creating a level-playing-field for campaigning actors. However, similar approaches still lack in the study of referendum campaign finance, even though the last few decades have seen a proliferation in both referendum use and the implementation of new regulatory regimes governing them. Filling this knowledge gap is important since the volatile information context of referendums creates fertile ground for political parties to aspire voter behavior manipulation, partly because voters are less able to rely on party-affiliated cues. Campaign regulations such as transparency requirements and limits on income and expenditure can potentially help increase voter competence and fairness, as well as help battle corruption. This paper asks the question how cross-national variation in referendum campaign finance regulations can be categorized. In order to answer this, it introduces the Referendum Political Referendum Campaign Finance Regulation Index’ (RefCFRI) based on Horncastle's (2022) two-stage methodology of Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Model Based Clustering – previously used to develop the ‘Regulation of Political Finance Indicator’ (RoPFI). The index is compiled for 86 countries worldwide that have organized a national referendum since 1990, for which data is collected from primary sources, i.e. the relevant legislation, added where necessary with information from international election databases (primarily the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance Political Finance Database) and reports from the Council of Europe, GRECO and OSCE. In sum, the development of the RefCFRI both complements and extends the reach of the RoPFI, by providing data on a previously overlooked area of campaign financing. Taken together, these two indicators provide a major resource for scholars of political finance, elections, and referendum campaigns.

Authors: William Horncastle (University of Birmingham), Iain McMenamin (Dublin City University)

Our knowledge of the relationship between the regulation of political finance and political institutions is underdeveloped, largely because of the previous absence of an adequate measure of regulation. For all current democracies, we investigate whether Lijphart’s distinction between consensus and majoritarian democracies and whether Henisz’s index of political constraints are associated with more or less regulation. Our dependent variable is Horncastle’s index derived from multiple correspondence analysis and model-based clustering of the latest iteration of International IDEA’s data. We control for corruption, British legal origin, the age of the democracy.

Author: Anna Unger (Eötvös Loránd University)

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.

Author: Wouter Wolfs (KU Leuven)

Digital campaigning by political actors is testing the limits of core aspects of regulatory frameworks for elections, and poses challenges to electoral integrity. Social media advertising potentially exposes elections to foreign interference and the spread of disinformation; the use of cryptocurrencies, crowdfunding and micro-credits can be used to circumvent existing rules on donations and electoral fundraising; and the role of digital influencers in election campaigns constitutes a substantial test for the rules on third party campaigning. This is especially worrying considering that campaign finance remains the weakest element of electoral regulation and management. While there has been increasing academic attention to the digital organisation and activities of political parties and candidates the regulatory challenges of these new practices have been often overlooked. Similarly, while many scholars have examined many aspects and the evolution of party and campaign finance regulations, the digital realm of electoral campaigning has been limited to case studies and has not been the object of a comparative and comprehensive study. This paper will connect these different fields of research by assessing the European trends of the regulation of the digital aspects of electoral campaigns. This paper will examine (1) examine if and how EU countries have adapted their regulatory framework to digital campaigning (2) explore factors that can explain why countries have (not) altered their rules, and (3) identify possible best practices.

Author: Morgan Wack (Clemson University)

The nascency of many judicial systems in sub-Saharan Africa has left many scholars to question their role as adjudicators of electoral contests. By appealing the outcome of Kenya's contentious 2022 presidential election to the Supreme Court, opposition candidate Raila Odinga indirectly presented an opportunity to study the role of courts in mediating perceptions of election integrity. Drawing on data from an online survey conducted prior to and following the Supreme Court of Kenya's decision to uphold the election results, we present for the first time evidence that African courts can improve confidence in electoral outcomes. Specifically, we illustrate that among both sets of supporters, the Supreme Court's decision improved belief in the fairness of the election's outcome. The results of the study have implications for policymakers interested in protecting election integrity in the region.

Author: Takeshi Ito (University of Tokyo)

The electoral governance in Italy and Japan has suffered from criticism of malpractices like corruption, vote-buying, miscalculations, and partisan management since the beginning of postwar democracies (Birch 2011). Nevertheless, the institutional designs of electoral governance in both countries, like the governmental model of the EMBs, have been mostly unchanged. Why has such troubled management experienced no major reform? The paper explores the postwar development of electoral management and the recent electoral reform attempts. The author argues that the high legitimacy of current institutional settings, both in public opinion and in elites' perceptions, paradoxically have crowded out the opportunities for the adoption of a more independent model of electoral governance as in other European and Asian countries. By combining quantitative analysis of public opinions and intensive interviews of officials at polling stations, officials at local and central EMBs, and politicians, the author argues that notwithstanding the comparative evaluation of Italian and Japanese electoral governance into a governmental model, the actual institutions have been more plural and democratic. The complex balances of mixed parties, such as the EMB in the administration, parliaments, political parties, judiciaries, and citizens, have given strong legitimacy to the Italian style of electoral management and a high degree of path dependency to the Japanese one. Sufficiently pluralized and democratized, the Italian and Japanese styles have survived throughout the postwar period, even though they have been requested for more reform to increase electoral integrity and to improve substantive voting rights. Despite the mounting troubles of electoral governance, the recent attempts for reforms have to follow path-dependent alternatives to curtail corruption and mismanagement. Theoretically, the paper sheds new light on the relationship between institutions and the discourse. Strong beliefs and discourses on the democratic nature of electoral governance across the various actors would crowd out the possibility of changing the equilibrium of existing electoral management institutions. Such legitimacy in public opinion and elites' perceptions should be vital to securing or restoring electoral integrity in increasingly polarizing democracies.

Author: Maria Linden (Tampere University)

While electoral manipulation has been increasing all around the world, studies addressing resistance to electoral manipulation are rare. Very little is known about the actors attempting to prevent electoral manipulation and their strategies. This paper addresses the gap by offering a new way to categorize and assess said actors and their actions. This paper examines attempts to develop resilience against electoral manipulation in the United States between the contentious presidential election of 2020 and the next presidential election in 2024. The paper answers the following questions: 1) Which actors attempted to resist electoral manipulation in the United States between 2021 and 2024? 2) What kinds of strategies did they utilize? and 3) What are the partisan affiliations and leanings of the actors and what are the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties in their approaches to resisting electoral manipulation? The paper also offers a preliminary analysis of how effective or successful these actors and their strategies may prove to be in preventing manipulation of the 2024 presidential election. To recognize acts of resistance, this study first identifies the electoral manipulation tactics in use in the present-day United States. For that purpose, this study relies on a framework constructed by this author. The framework categorizes electoral manipulation tactics utilized by Trump and other members of the Republican party in connection with the 2020 elections and thereafter. This paper relies on qualitative and quantitative content analysis of news reports and editorials from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. To complement the newspaper material, criminal indictments related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election are also examined. Acts of resistance to electoral manipulation are categorized by type of actor, type of action and type of electoral manipulation they are trying to resist. The paper finds that many different actors have attempted to resist electoral manipulation, for example Congress, the Biden administration, attorneys and the courts, electoral officials, the media, non-governmental organizations, and private companies. Some of the types of action these actors have taken include indictments, lawsuits, new legislation, raising public awareness of the issue, suspending lawyers’ licenses, and shutting down social media accounts. The actions taken seek to counter or prevent most if not all the different types of electoral manipulation identified in the framework utilized in the paper.

Author: Laura Cazarini Trotta (Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar))

This research aims to explore informal and illegal practices within Brazilian political parties, specifically focusing on women candidates for federal deputy positions. Based on responses from 47 self-declared Black female candidates in the 2018 general elections, gathered through a questionnaire, revelations highlighted practices such as 'women sacrificial lambs' or 'phantom candidates.' In the context of campaign financing, it is crucial to note that Brazil's public campaign funding is the responsibility of the party to distribute. In the 2018 elections, a law mandated parties to proportionally distribute the received funds among women candidates. To guide electoral campaigns, it's essential to understand the electoral process in Brazil, where elections occur every two years, alternating between general and municipal elections. Most offices have 4-year terms, except for the Senate, where politicians serve 8-year terms, with 1 or 2 senators elected per general election. Except for the presidential position, all other offices in general elections have territorial ties and are voted on a state level. Since 1993, there are 513 members in the Chamber of Deputies and 81 in the Federal Senate. Consequently, parties play a crucial role by presenting internally defined candidate lists. However, Brazil faces significant challenges in terms of women's underrepresentation, currently ranking lowest in the IPU's Latin American index and maintaining one of the lowest global representations. We will explore persistent barriers hindering effective female inclusion in Brazilian politics, despite various electoral law changes. Thus, we will highlight how the aforementioned informal and illegal practices intertwine with challenges faced during the electoral process, emphasizing the quest for solutions and the importance of integrity to strengthen female political participation. Given the ongoing nature of this research, definitive conclusions are not yet possible. Nevertheless, this study aims to contribute significantly to the ongoing discourse on electoral integrity and the inclusion of women in Brazilian politics.

Author: Maike Rump (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

Voter fraud allegations by former President Donald Trump still dominate the media up to today. His presidency has brought a climate of mistrust and conspiracies toward the political system in general. However, the American political system provides certain specifics that support voter fraud allegations, for example concerning voter registration regulations. On the one hand, there is an ongoing American debate on voter fraud (allegations), but on the other, we find similar survey results in countries in which voter fraud seems not to be a topic of concern in the broader public. For example, a similar media debate on voter fraud did not happen in Germany or Austria, despite the fact, that the recent elections in both countries did change the political climate, too. However, empirical studies detected voter fraud beliefs during the Federal Election 2021 in Germany and found that they are related to right-wing-voting and non-voting (Etzel 2022). This is in line with previous studies of the 2017 Federal Election in Germany indicating that the so-called plot-hypotheses (Birch/ ElSafoury 2017) is valid for the engagement of the German AfD in misinformation and mistrust in election procedures (Schmitt-Beck/ Faas 2021). This study explores whether attitudes towards voter fraud are more of a survey artifact or political attitudes related to concerns with the political system. I answer this question by using data from the Austrian Corona Panel Project (Kittel et al. 2021), which employed a new voter fraud item battery, making it possible to test a more procedural critique of the election and in addition, a more conspiracy related perception of voter fraud beliefs. I show that lower trust in parliament and lower satisfaction with democracy, as well as higher perceived fraud risk in postal voting, are key factors in explaining voter fraud beliefs.

Author: Emre Toros (Bilkent University)

For democracies, trust is a double-edged sword. On one side, while democracies demand a certain level of trust for political institutions, on the other, they also require an active and attentive public with a healthy scepticism of government and the willingness to change it should the need arise. Following this argument, this paper defines trust as an attitude of individuals driven by exposed information, personal cognitive features, and an interaction between the two, producing positive and negative consequences on attitudes and behaviours related to democracy and theorises two sub-types as naïve and critical, and scrutinises their relationship to trust in the Turkish electoral management body, YSK. Naive trust can be defined as an attitude of individuals who unquestioningly believe in their views and the accuracy of the information they receive regarding the object of their trust. Such an attitude includes uncritical trust in political authorities without scrutinising their intentions or dubious methods. In that sense, naïve, blind and excessive trust in governments comes with the risks of fostering political indifference, promoting a decline in public vigilance and government control, and eventually harming democratic functioning. Naive trust can have harmful consequences by eliminating the ability to resist persuasive information and malicious propaganda (Nai et al., 2017). On the other hand, critical trust exists when individuals are reflexive toward the recipient of their trust and display abilities to question beliefs and the accuracy of the information they receive. Individuals with critical trust usually identify accurate information while simultaneously validating this information by referring to alternative sources (Norris, 2022; Gierzinsky, 2018). Accordingly, critical trust is the most desirable position for a democracy from a normative standpoint. This study offers a fresh theoretical approach for setting the naïve and critical trust typologies and examines their link to trust in the Turkish electoral management body YSK, by employing a series of regression models using data based on a country-representative survey carried out in Turkey in April 2023. Findings show that although naïve and critical trust act as solid determinants of democratic satisfaction alongside ideological positions, both types are moderated by partisanship.

Authors: Holly Ann Garnett (University of East Anglia), Nicole Goodman (Brock University)

Canada is known for having some of the highest quality and trustworthy elections around the globe (Garnett et al. 2023). But while trust in Canadian elections remains relatively high (Garnett and Leibel 2022), it may be masking growing divisions between those who have high confidence and those who have mounting distrust in elections. This can have alarming consequences. Low public trust in elections have important democratic consequences, including whether a citizen will participate in the future or simply ‘check out’ of the electoral process, abide by the decisions made by elected officials, turn to ideological extremism, or even resort to violent means to reject perceived unfair results (Garnett 2018; Hooghe, Marien, and Pauwels 2011; Norris 2019). Even a small cohort of individuals mistrusting elections can have dramatic consequences for democracy, as was made clear in the United States on January 6th 2022. In an era of declining global trust in politicians and political institutions (Pew Research Center 2023; Citrin and Stoker 2018; Norris 2022) scholars, policymakers and electoral officials are rightly concerned about the public’s declining willingness to trust elections as the primary mechanisms of democratic governance (Przeworski 1999; Dahl 1971). What does this trend look like in Canada? Where are there growing gaps in trust? And what can be done about it? This paper will consider major trends.

Author: Leontine Loeber (University of East Anglia)

In this paper the trust of Dutch voters in the electoral process is examined. The Netherlands is a longstanding democracy which traditionally has high turnout and high levels of trust in the electoral process. However, this trust of voters seems to be in decline. Using the data from the Dutch Election Survey, this paper looks at the factors that determine which voters have high or low levels of trust. Previous research showed that there is no real 'winner-loser ‘effect on trust in the election process in the Netherlands (Loeber 2010, 2011). The paper examines if this is still true now that Dutch politics are becoming more and more polarized. Also, the predicting demographic factors that were found in previous studies are examined to see it they still hold true. The paper aims to see if explanations can be found for the decline of trust among Dutch voters.