I’m curious to know more about the “Political financing regimes that remove the power from... angry small donors would be good,”. What examples are there of this and how has it improved/curbed the rise of polarizing candidates or party platforms?
I’m curious to know more about the “Political financing regimes that remove the power from... angry small donors would be good,”. What examples are there of this and how has it improved/curbed the rise of polarizing candidates or party platforms?
The simple answer is: Public financing of political parties. This actually used to be more-or-less the norm in the Western world. France and Germany give public subsidies to their parties. Canada used to, but killed it in the mid-00s — and I think you can actually trace the corrosive effect of relying on small-time donors. The U.S. is obviously a different beast altogether, but the Presidential election campaign fund checkoff — a subsidy Americans can opt into on their tax returns — used to be a version of that public subsidy, but has been more-or-less dead since ~2008.
So we have the mechanisms! We're just not using them.
I’m curious to know more about the “Political financing regimes that remove the power from... angry small donors would be good,”. What examples are there of this and how has it improved/curbed the rise of polarizing candidates or party platforms?
The simple answer is: Public financing of political parties. This actually used to be more-or-less the norm in the Western world. France and Germany give public subsidies to their parties. Canada used to, but killed it in the mid-00s — and I think you can actually trace the corrosive effect of relying on small-time donors. The U.S. is obviously a different beast altogether, but the Presidential election campaign fund checkoff — a subsidy Americans can opt into on their tax returns — used to be a version of that public subsidy, but has been more-or-less dead since ~2008.
So we have the mechanisms! We're just not using them.