Money has always been necessary for political parties and candidates to compete in elections. The purpose of anti-corruption efforts in the area of political finance is not to curtail funding, but rather to ensure that parties are properly funded from sources that are neither corrupt nor potentially corrupting, and are accountable to oversight bodies and the general public for their funding.

It is vital that corruption risks are addressed, given how serious the potential fallout of corrupt exchanges between parties and funders: exposure of underhand dealings to obtain operational and campaign finance gives the impression – in some cases well-founded – that access to the democratic decision-making process can be bought, irrespective of what the public wants. As a result, people lose interest in the political process and lose trust in government. Also crucial is to tackle the abuse of state resources (such as state media, staff time or use of official telephones, vehicles and offices for campaigning) by incumbent parties.

Many tools are available to governments to control money in politics and to prevent political parties from falling into the pockets of their donors. Legislatures can try to curb the need for private funding by passing laws to provide funding or subsidised access to the media. They can also lessen the demand for money by shortening campaign periods or capping expenditures.

A second way of tackling corrupt party financing is to regulate the flows of money into politics. The most common methods are bans on contributions from certain individuals (such as convicted criminals) or institutions (for instance from foreign governments) and ceilings on donations.

A third route – and in fact necessary for the above two approaches to work – is to increase transparency of campaign finance by introducing disclosure requirements, whereby the public is informed of who gave how much to whom, for what purpose and when.

A worldwide survey of national political finance regimes by USAID reveals that most of the 111 countries studied have some form of public financing of political parties, yet about half rely on private funds from corporations, trade unions or foreigners – three sources considered very influential in determining the outcome of an election and with great potential for corruption. With regard to limits, restrictions on spending are more popular (41 per cent of the countries surveyed) than restrictions on contributions (28 per cent), though the majority of nations have restrictions on neither. Disclosure is even less common. For more information, please see TI's Global Corruption Report on political corruption (2004).

A good set of political finance regulations is, of course, of little use if it is not properly enforced. Effective enforcement requires independent oversight agencies endowed with powers to supervise, investigate and, if required, institute legal proceedings in cases of malpractice. Unfortunately, many governments lack the political will to give teeth to supervisory agencies lest it work to their disadvantage once out of office.

While TI's Standards on Political Finance and Favours outline the minimum benchmarks for transparency and integrity of political financing, a second document, TI's Policy Brief 2/2005 on Political Finance Regulations: Bridging the Enforcement Gap, provides key suggestions for how to ensure that recommendations are effectively enforced.

Regardless of the political finance regime in place in a given country, it is incumbent upon candidates and political parties themselves to ensure that their funding is clean and that information about the money raised and spent is made available. Parties can and must resist the temptation to accept money that binds them to serve interests other than the general public's.