Earlier this month, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights issued this report on the French presidential elections (April-May 2007), which discusses some of the campaign finance regulations.
One feature of note is that the only existing penalty for non-compliance with the spending limits is the sacrifice of post-electoral reimbursements, a combination which makes for a [...]

The Economist writes that the reforms to campaign finance in the UK are foundering as the parties are unable to reach compromise on Sir Hayden Phillips’ recommendations of more public funding and limits on spending and contributions.  Labor wants the public funding, but the Tories wont go for it unless there are limits on union [...]

Cisco Systems has gotten into trouble in Brazil for tax evasion, and now the PT is implicated: it seems Cisco gave over a quarter of a million dollars to the PT and the party did not disclose the contribution. It seems that the contribution helped Cisco get a contract to supply a state-owned bank in Brazil. [...]

This month’s PS includes Werner and Mayer’s “Public Election Funding, Competition, and Candidate Gender,” an analysis of which candidates accept public funding for their campaigns to the Maine and Arizona state legislators (or which candidate do not accept such funding, and opt to finance themselves). Controlling for a variety of district-level and candidate-level characteristics (including partisanship, incumbency, [...]

Switzerland has yet to make it onto this blog for a simple reason: they have no campaign finance regulations whatsoever, including no disclosure regulations, which means no (official) campaign finance data. I believe they are alone in this category in Europe, although there are countries such as Sweden and Luxembourg that have few regulations beyond [...]

Mirador Electoral produced this report (spanish) about party spending in the current election, which is currently still underway with a run-off presidential election to come. I have not looked at it yet, but Latinnews.com’s ($) summary includes:
Mirador Electoral, an umbrella group of academic institutions and civic organisations acting as electoral observers, said that the reports [...]

Money would be given to political parties to help them recruit immigrants if a reform to extend voting rights to foreign national were adopted, says Minister of State for Integration. Report at the Irish Times ($).  

While the Political Parties Bill that would introduce public funding and disclosure of political finance awaits the presidents signature, candidates and parties for the December elections are busy demanding and supplying nominations, for which fees are levied by the parties. These fees are small (up to US$1500), but are an important source of funding for the [...]

Two weeks ago, the PM of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany, said he would seek to pass bills to pursue greater transparency in public and political finance. Reuters Canada reports:
Gyurcsany last week became the first sitting Hungarian prime minister since the end of communism to be questioned by prosecutors in a case involving charges that a minor [...]

A nationwide survey of citizens’ thoughts regarding what of Mexico’s electoral and campaign finance system needed to be reformed had been conducted by IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) to inform Congress in their consideration of reform. The reform has since passed at the federal level and needs to get the approval of a majority of Mexico’s 32 states. The [...]

Kenya’s parliament passed a reform that would introduce public funding of political parties, limits on parties to contributions, tax deductions on those contributions, and disclosure of party finance. It would also prohibit MPs from switching parties while in the parliament and introduces a new set of party registration requirements. The bill still needs to be [...]

This article at The Age discusses various aspects of political finance in Australia, including some recent disclosure figures and critics of the current regulatory framework.

Eight years after its introduction, the electoral authority (TSE) has used its power to revoke the electoral victories of candidates who buy votes 215 times. Estadao.com writes that 101 of these were mayors, 53 were vice-mayors, and 51 were councilmen. The small remainer were federal deputies, senators, or governors. Some politicians, including 25 federal deputies, are currently [...]

The AP writes about Conservatives’ new answer to Moveon.org:
Now, a group of conservatives and Republicans with close ties to the White House have formed their own enterprise, Freedom’s Watch, landing on the political scene with a $15 million ad campaign to defend President Bush’s Iraq war strategy.
But this is just the start. Its organizers don’t [...]

Another opinion piece urging transparency in political finance in Trinidad & Tobago, by William Lucie-Smith at T&T Express. Among other things, it draws attention to government-financed propoganda and a statement by Transparency International condemning such behavior as corrupt.

An opinion in the Business Daily (Kenya) courtesy of AllAfrica.com criticizes foreign donations to political parties, particularly by the US’s International Republican Institute:

To understand the absurdity of what Africans have accepted as a norm, imagine African countries financing a third party in the United States.
… African election processes should be monitored by the African Union, the [...]

Newt Gingrich complained on ABC and Fox this week about the campaign finance laws that would require him to quit his non-profit, Bloomberg.com writes:  
Gingrich said on ABC’s “This Week” program that legal opinions he sought led him to conclude he can’t run for president and lead American Solutions for Winning the Future, a tax-exempt [...]