Electoral finance and deliberative democracy: Can different approaches to electoral finance impact the quality of legislative debate?

Research aims
The overarching aim of this research is to explore the degree to which political finance laws in western liberal democratic countries impact on the quality of legislative debate.

Research Question:
Can political finance laws and practices affect the quality of legislative debate? If so, which laws specifically?

Importance of political finance
Campaign finance is a key element in the election process for all western democratic countries and is designed to maintain and improve electoral integrity. Numerous contemporary examples suggest campaign finance laws can harm electoral and democratic processes. For example, in the 2012 US legislative elections, 95% of House candidates and 80% of Senate candidates who outspent their opponent won their election (Hickey, 2012), indicating a significant link between campaign finance and election outcomes. This example emphasises the potential problem that politicians could become overly reliant on political donors to become elected and may prioritise donor voices in political debate.

While literature exploring the various ways political finance laws can impact the political process is widespread, there has been significantly less literature dedicated to the impact on the quality of debate. By exploring deliberative spheres through the use of comparative methods, this research will provide a timely and important contribution to this critical political issue, providing valuable research to political scholars by addressing a clear research gap in deliberative study. This research is essential for policymakers seeking to improve democratic deliberation in legislative spheres through finance reform, and to restore public confidence in democratic integrity.

Method
This research will use comparative case studies to answer the outlined research questions. To analyse the links between deliberative democracy and campaign finance regulation, this research will explore the impact of campaign finance regulation on the quality of legislative debate in different western liberal democracies using content analysis and interview techniques.

At this initial stage of the research design, stating the specific countries that will be used for comparative analysis would be premature. However, a systematic method of selection will be used whereby each country will be given a ranking relating to four different categories of political finance law (public financing, contribution limits, spending limits, and transparency). The selection process must consider the various other independent variables that can affect good deliberative debate; for example, electoral systems (Uhr, 1998), referendums (Steiner, 2012), and legislative structures (Grogan & Gusmano, 2005). From these rankings, countries will be selected to allow for a comparative study that can utilise Mill's method of agreement techniques for analysis to control the additional independent variables (Mill, 1843). Mill's method of agreement is a helpful tool in comparative analysis used to 'search for patterns of invariance' (Ragin, 2014, p.37) and to identify causal variables among cases 'with one characteristic in common' (Alasuutari et al, 2008, p.252).

A case study analysis will be used to measure the impact of political finance laws on the quality of political debate through an analysis of recent legislative developments of certain policy areas: with the aim of identifying which stakeholders had the most influence in the legislative debate and measuring to what extent public opinion was taken into account. Content analysis will be the primary method used and will take guidance from an existing research design used by Steiner in his empirical assessment of the deliberative model in different political systems and institutions (Steiner, 2012).