 Welcome everyone to this Facebook live session with International idea my name is Lisa Hogman I work in the communications team and together with me today is your vehicle Hamada from our PPR team political participation and representation that's right yes and I want to invite everyone who's watching add your comments questions in the field under the live stream we will try and get back to you as soon as we can we will today also talk about one of our databases and we'll make sure to put the link directly under the live feed so that you know how you have an easy access point to the database and today we're going to talk about money and money in politics okay why don't you start a little bit just describe yourself and the team absolutely thank you Lisa so my name is Yuki Hamada as Lisa mentioned I work as a senior program officer in political participation and representation team here at ideaheadquarter in Stockholm so my team has been working on the issue of money in politics for a number of years practically I mean we also work on the issues of political finance regulations how one country adapting and then also supporting the countries reform their political finance regulations but we also look at issues controlling illicit flow of money as well as looking at other risk areas when it comes to money in politics such as emerging trends of cryptocurrencies in political finance for example yes and if we're talking about illicit money we actually did a Facebook live not so long ago so if you're interested in that topic and how that relates to political parties and participation you go back to internationally the as YouTube stream and you'll find it there but let's go back to the basic why does money in politics matter exactly it matters both both positively and negatively and of course let's start with the positives and of course money is important aspects of any democracies we acknowledge that political parties and candidates they do need financial resources to successfully run their campaigns and be elected and of course money from citizen point of view as well any donations that they make is also a way of expressing their political support to a particular political party or candidates so in this sense money is an integral part of any electoral process I would say but however we also recognize that if the money the flow of money into campaigns to political parties is not appropriately regulated those with bigger financial powers or private sectors or or or anyone with with them with a much bigger financial resources could dominate such campaigns or cast a huge influence over political parties and candidates and this will inevitably undermine the integrity of political participation representation so therefore we believe the appropriate level of regulation of money in politics is crucial and that's something we've been working on okay yeah this is very interesting and just concretely what it is working on I know you want to talk about the political finance database because it's just been updated could you talk what is it and what was the rationale behind updates the updates thank you so the this database that I'm going to talk about is called political finance database it was first launched in 2003 so it's been around the block for quite some time it started with a demand from countries and other electoral management bodies that they often know what's what's happening in their own countries but however when it comes to looking for the other good practices or what other countries are doing when it comes to regulating politics there is a very severe lack of resources data so they don't necessarily know how to compare themselves to other countries so then idea undertook this quite a big project and then start collecting information about a number of countries political finance regulations and then put them all together that's how we started and but of course political finance regulations similar to any laws changing quite rapidly and then also landscapes surrounding the issue of money in politics is also changing so we periodically conduct update of the database as well and the most recent update was in 2016 and then it's been two years obvious exactly so we this time around we managed to increase the number of questions to 74 questions and managed to increase the number of countries included as well so I'm happy to announce that 2018 update we currently have 74 questions for 180 countries which I believe made this database is one of the richest source of information in for those interested in money in politics you mentioned that this is a field that it's changing quite rapidly and that countries have a need to actually know what other countries are doing but I guess you also have researchers and for them they like to see trends can you do this with this new update absolutely this is one of the added feature on 2018 version of the database and so users are researchers exactly for anyone who's interested in money in politics and they could actually compare the 2016 data and then 2018 data so in some cases countries have changed their political finance regulations the last two years and that itself is a very interesting findings but also in some cases you can also see some shortcomings still remain in the last two years so even if you do not see the changes that tells quite some stories as well so that's quite interesting feature could you say something sort of what are the questions what does the database cover it's a big field exactly and I said 74 questions that's that's that's a huge number of questions but we just to introduce some structure into this we brought the categorized those questions into four pillars four categories one is about public funding so we look into the ways how countries distribute state funding state resources to political parties that means what are the criteria's or in the first place do a country provide such public funding to political parties and so forth then second category is about regulations concerning the private donations so that's political party allowed to receive political donations from private sources but what are the private sources so we look also into details is whether if there's a regulation on donation from anonymous sources or foreign sources or how about companies with state ownership for example so that's a second pillar and the third pillar is about the regulation on spending so we have a number of questions relating to whether there's a spending cap and spending limits and for example and then the last category is about the oversight who is checking exactly if there is someone exactly exactly parties and for those who just joined let me just recap that I'm sitting here today with Yuki and we're talking about money money in politics and more in detail about international ideas knowledge resources publications and the database that we have so you talked about the four pillars yes could you say something then sort of more in detail what what have you found when it comes to public funding exactly so the public funding is the the first thing probably political parties or electoral management bodies think about when they think about political finance because it is a growing trend and then also it is a major pillar to ensure that the playing field is is actually leveled and in that sense by providing public funding most political parties regardless of their size or the the history whether they've been in establish for long or not and have some type of financial resources to start with so we believe that this is a very good practice to have and then encouraging countries to consider developing public funding system to to to make sure that political representation is accessed equally but the very interesting fact that our new database found is actually 68% of the countries that we surveyed have such a public funding system at the moment which is encouraging but of course the free side of the coin is that the 32% of the countries do not have public funding this means that political parties and candidates in those countries have to 100% rely on the private funding yeah and we'll talk a little bit more about but I know that you're a bit excited and I know there's a book about how you can use public funding to increase women's political participate or representation representation yeah exactly so thank you for bringing this up because one of the perks of having public funding is that it has a very good a secondary objective as well so of course the primary I mean we're thinking about providing the the minimum financial parties but for example if we design the public funding in in certain ways and we could certainly address other programs in politics as well and as you mentioned one of the persist persisting program in politics is the gender gender inequality gen females and the representations in politics and we believe by ear tagging for example the public funding to promoting gender related activities or making sure that criteria for receiving public funding to be linked to the number of female candidates nominated by a political parties for example political parties have more incentive more financial incentive to include female candidates in the electoral list for example and then we believe that's been working in some countries and then we actually devoted that time and then produce a standalone report here gender target public funding for political parties which was just published in 2018 as well and this includes a number of country case studies and according to our database to the best of knowledge currently about 15% of the countries surveyed in the database and have already such provisions and that's about 30 countries but then also this report says I mean it may not sound a large volume just yet but the number has been increasing so in the years to come we believe this number will even go up and this is quite interesting because I think the sort of earlier findings of ideas research show that one of the reasons I mean there are many reasons why women don't have the same possibilities to be elected but one is lack of resources absolutely absolutely this is one way of actually overcoming that by using public funding absolutely okay so we talked about public funding yeah and then we have the other big issues private funding absolutely have what has what has changed exactly so to start with an international idea takes a stance that private funding is not always bad I mean we always acknowledge that this is a very important part of the for citizens to express their political will so therefore we do not advocate to regulate everything or even ban every donation so to say but however increasingly in the recent years as well we see a lot of scandals for example political parties receiving a huge amount of donations from questionable sources or sometimes anonymous donations and citizens also demand transparency and accountability so therefore in this respect and we like to see countries moving towards more transparent and better regulated public private funding scheme and just as an example for example recently in New Zealand a poet politician actually receive a very huge amount of donations from a business person and that triggered a bit of the controversy and then also the reform debate for example from what sources a political party or political or candidate receive donation for example or to how much I mean or to what extent and do they need to disclose the identity of donor for example and you told me when we prepared for this I mean in some countries there is nothing to ban a donation from a foreign country for example exactly so to to answer your questions according to the database we have over 30% of surveyed countries currently do not have regulations when it comes to donations from foreign sources and the same number of countries do not have regulations on anonymous donations either okay this is very interesting have you seen any regional trends can you just sort of this is just happening in one region or no interestingly and this is actually happening everywhere and from established democracies to newly born democracies so really from Europe to Africa to Latin America to Asia Pacific there are countries who have regulations on these issues but there are also equally countries that do not have regulations okay interesting that it's a spread okay so we talked about the income side of political parties and money in politics are there other regulatory trends that you can see absolutely any regulation of money in politics has to have two sides at least one is on regulation on income side as you mentioned and then the other regulation needs to be on the spending side so that means political parties and candidates are required to disclose how they spend and the money they receive and this is also the interest of the in the general public and also the media and then also the civil CSO's that they're interested in the political matters and it's very interesting to see that of course we take this for granted but currently according to the database 77% of the countries do require political parties to submit their financial reports at some point of their electoral cycle and although this is a majority of countries but if you also think about 23% of the countries there's no provision requiring political parties to submit their financial report which is definitely something that we need to work on and then countries to consider regulating and then of course even within the 77% of the countries I just mentioned there's a wide variety when it comes to the forms and then modalities of disclosure and reporting in some countries political parties submit their financial forms in paper format for example in more advanced versions are the countries they have systems to do so online through the digital platform and then of course in this modern age we certainly like to encourage countries to move from the paper base or analog system to more advanced ICT digital platform to allow political parties to report and then disclose political finance this is not just because being fancy it has a number of benefits by using the ICT and digital disclosures one is obviously it will eliminate human errors significantly of course when you do it in you know paper and paper pen even if you do not intend to it could be easily create some type of human errors and then the risk will be significantly reduced if you use online technologies of course and of course and the efficiency and the speed as well this will significantly improve them by using the ICT technologies and then also from user perspectives if you do so online it will be much easier when it comes to disclose such informations users can for example download such information and then use it for their own research for example or they could search or filter so that they can just easily find the information that they're interested without going through the hundreds of files exactly can imagine so really I think there are a lot of benefits we like to think that this is a very modern solution to the a lot of programs surrounding the transparency and then disclosure and then on that note again we're also happy to announce that we actually been working on this issue for quite some years and aside this database we also produce a new guide so-called digital solutions for political reporting and disclosure we happen to have here exactly it's been also a year and it has been proved to be a very useful source of information for any countries or any political parties or electoral management bodies who are thinking developing such platform the good thing about this guide is that it includes a very detailed concrete step by step instructions and recommendations for developing such systems so if for anyone for whatever stage even if you may not even thought about this but this will help conceptualizing the digital disclosure or even if you have a system but if you're thinking about updating it this also provides some concrete recommendations to make it even better more user-friendly source of web so I think this covers a very wide range of audience and then certainly we encourage the viewers to have a look if you have a chance sounds very good also because I think everyone knows that any big project costs a lot of money so anything that can be done to facilitate that process is of course useful when it comes you talked about the expenditure side then you mentioned that the force pillar in the database is oversight exactly yeah could you expand a little bit on the new findings exactly so there's an oversight it's very important and then that's the cornerstone that's the last part of the oversight and then when it comes to what needs to be oversight that's slightly linked to the regulatory trends of income part as well but for example what needs to be reported for example and that's very important and then when it comes to so I'm sliding back and forth between the and you know spending and then how oversight needs to be conducted on spending and we find that placing so for example spending limits on some of the issues is a very important as well and then for example currently 32% of the countries that surveyed in the database have some sort of the regulations on spending political spending and then this seems to be a growing trend but of course oversight bodies need to actually monitor whether it's properly adhered to actually I mean this is very important and then of course it's numbers increasing but if you look into the 32% of course its situations also more interesting for example so there's only currently it comes to spending only 3% of the countries have a specific spending limit on the online media advertisement so as we all know given the recent use of the Facebook or Twitter or even some scandals relating to fake news or online sources the oversight bodies are increasingly aware how this could be properly managed and then regulated as well so we also do receive a lot of questions as well as the inquiries from the country's electro management bodies and then we see that there's no standard way of regulating at the moment and as you also see that technologies advancing very rapidly so the unfortunate truth is that regulations are a little bit lagging behind and a bit slow to react to the fast-changing technological world but only 3% of them have a regulations on online media advertisement I mean that itself is a very interesting finding and then linking to the oversight we like to think the oversight bodies may consider develop some type of strategies how this regulation spending can be monitored for example and then better regulated the spending by political parties and candidates when it comes to the use of online sources and when you talk about oversight and how many countries have this kind of function and function as to the overseeing people and I'm glad to report that about almost all countries have bodies responsible for overseeing political finance but there's a very big variations in some countries and also growing trend as well have a dedicated electro management bodies we call it EMBs so that they are often the independent dedicated agency who are tasked to monitor and then also in some cases they have some legal power to defer cases to prosecution for example in case of the misconduct but in other countries they do not necessarily have such independent bodies and then oversight is in the hand of in some cases parliaments or sometimes with the government ministries or in some cases the audit agencies as well so there's no uniform way of overseeing the money in politics but of course we like to advocate I mean the depending on the country context of course but we like to think any finance and public bodies whose task to oversee the political finance needs to be to some extent independent and has sufficient capacities both human capacities and also budgetary capacities to conduct meaningful oversight and oversight is a catch-all word but if you think about it it's a lot of work to develop policies and guidelines for political parties but also actually audit and verify the financial reports and also in case of the misconduct I mean who actually going to investigate these cases so it requires a lot of resources but however we like to think for any meaningful oversight agencies needs to have both independence and appropriate capacities and that's something any countries were thinking about reforming their oversight mechanisms need to consider yeah no and that's interesting because I mean otherwise you risk having a situation where you might have legislation but it's not really implemented if you don't have a good oversight exactly and as a final point yes and I wanted to ask you sort of what the future looks like and how to use the database and actually how the database is different because I know this is a publication it's it's getting a bit old and could you explain a little bit absolutely so this report is a funding of political parties and election campaigns as one of our best sellers if I say so myself but it's been published it was published exactly it was published in 2016 and then this was based on the findings of the our own political finance database back then in after 2016 update so it's still two years old and a lot of findings are still valid but however after this 2018 update I'm very pleased to announce that international idea is currently working on drafting a new set of policy papers based on the 2018 update so we hope to bring some new fresh issues on the table after this update and then we like to link these findings to the very specific concrete proposals for action for political parties or electoral management bodies or even for researchers for CSOs and media as a sort of food for thought and moving forward and also for the use of 2018 or any database that we have actually it's important to actually say this outright that we all know that the having political finance regulations or laws in place on paper that's not always guaranteed that those laws are implemented we all know that according to database I'm happy to say most of the countries have some levels of some forms of political finance regulations in place already but we all know that they're continuing scandals and also in some countries those rules are not complied at all unfortunately this database does not capture the level of compliance or the level of implementation in each country so unfortunately we do not know whether these laws that we we have in the database are actually exercised however we think and then based on the user feedback as well I think it's important to have a collection of data set in one place so that if a country or a researcher or or or media or anyone who's interested in money politics needs to know or are interested in knowing what other countries are doing or like to compare what their countries perform vis-à-vis the their neighboring countries or other countries they're interested this database will allow to do that and then I hope with this database will serve to be the central source for information for those who are really interested in political finance and then like to see what other countries and global trends are yeah and you have a feedback function so if anyone finds a mistake or or there's exactly exactly exactly so so yes Lisa so we're talking about very big data set now so we have 74 questions for 180 countries we deployed a large number of researchers to to verify those answers to the best of knowledge but of course the situations in each country is changing very rapidly and some data can easily be outdated so exactly so there's a function in the database that you can submit directly your feedback to us so that if any users have ever spotted such inaccuracies or or any changes or new reform ideas or what have you really we'll be very interested to hear from the users and then we consider their each proposal or feedback carefully and then try to update the database as as as soon as possible okay thank you Yuki this has been really interesting for me no thank you very much I want to thank everyone who's been watching and you have the link to the database directly under the the live stream and we have been talking about money in politics that's all for now exactly thank you very much thank you