The first problem when facing corruption in the political process is that in the absence of transparency laws that are applied with rigour, we simply don’t know much about the level of money flowing into politics, where it’s coming from and what it’s being spent on.

Even where disclosure requirements are relatively stringent, underreporting means that the general public knows little about the real cost of elections. The election monitoring tool, developed by a number of TI chapters, helps fill the information gap.

First developed by Poder Ciudadano in Argentina, the idea is to monitor the visible traces that election spending leaves: on the media, on posters, on public rallies. This doesn’t add up to the sum total spent on elections, but given that advertising and public campaigning ordinarily accounts for a large proportion of election spending, it does give some indication of expense. The amount known to have been spent thanks to detailed monitoring of visible expenses may well exceed that declared to have been spent by parties and candidates.

Since first implemented in 1997, the tool has been developed and adapted by other TI chapters. Many chapters now look not only at the volume of spending on media, but on the quality of media coverage, on unfair access to the media and on media bias. Media conglomerates with a leaning towards a certain candidate – frequently, but not always, the incumbent – may offer substantial discounts for airtime, for example.

Another development, spearheaded by TI Russia, has been to look more closely at the abuse of state resources in election campaigns. Behind inequitable election processes in many countries are not wealthy private companies or individuals channelling huge sums of money to a particular campaign, but a government that uses the state resources it controls to favour incumbents.

The Americas department has implemented, in partnership with the Carter Center, an innovative measurement tool that assesses the standards and practices governing transparency and accountability in party and campaign financing systems in 8 Latin American countries: Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. The goal of Crinis is to help increase public trust in democracy and political parties by promoting transparency and accountability in political financing.

The main problems identified are: a lack of oversight for private donations, scarce accountability by candidates, unreliable data delivered by parties along with the fact that information about political financing is not made public in most of the countries studied.

Click on any of the below links for detailed accounts of how TI chapters and other civil society organisations around the world monitor election spending in their countries:

Armenia: 2003 Parliamentary Elections
From March to June 2003, the Centre for Regional Development/Transparency
International Armenia (CRD-TIA) carried out a project entitled “Monitoring of Parties’ Campaign Finances during the 2003 Parliamentary Elections.” The objective was to “create a demand for transparency and accountability of political parties, promote public debates, and generate civil society pressure to ensure equal and fair elections and induce changes in the politicians’ behaviour.” The strategy focused on monitoring a range of expenditure - TV, radio, press, and outdoor advertising, other election publications, events and rallies - and comparing the results with income declarations submitted by the parties themselves and by the Central Election Commission. According to the findings, three out of eleven parties or electoral blocs exceeded the legal electoral fund limit. In most cases, significantly more was spent than was indicated by the parties or the Central Election Commission. In addition, 75 percent of voters said they had been offered bribes to vote for a particular party. The project drew special attention to the problem of a developed “grey economy,” which underpins much illegal party funding and spending, and facilitates poor disclosure. CRD-TIA also succeeded in generating significant pressure for reform: one party contested the election results with the Constitutional Court, citing project findings as evidence.

Poder Ciudadano, Argentina
A pilot programme was first carried out in the 1997 legislative elections, and then implemented during the 1999 presidential and parliamentary elections. Poder Ciudadano monitored spending on audio-visual, graphic and street level publicity and on public rallies. The tool generated information about election campaign expenses. A figure of reference is now available: almost US $80 million were spent on audio-visual, graphic and street publicity between August and October 1999. The parties only acknowledged a total expenditure of around US $50 million for the same period, a difference of over US $30 million. Between January and October 1999, the combined party campaign expenses amounted to more than US $91 million.

Corporacion PARTICIPA Chile
The project was carried out from October to December 2001 in Santiago, Chile, ahead of the parliamentary elections. The problems addressed were: inequitable media coverage of different candidates and their election pledges during the campaign period; the lack of thorough or credible reporting by some media sources; and media bias. PARTICIPA based much of its methodology on research undertaken by the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute.

Transparencia Internacional Costa Rica
The project began in August 2001 and was initially planned to run until the presidential elections in February 2002. It was extended for two additional months because of a second round of elections. In Costa Rica political parties are given quite high levels of state funding. The first stage of the project was to ask the presidential candidates to sign up to an agreement to release on request all financial information regarding the funding of their campaigns. Seven of the eight candidates signed.

CLD, Ecuador
The project was implemented ahead of the presidential elections in October and November 2002. A daily press bulletin, Campanazo, or "bell ringing", was printed on the front pages of all main newspapers. This allowed monitors to pinpoint precisely when candidates exceeded the ceiling for campaign expenditure and to request that the national electoral tribunal issue a prohibition against further spending.

Delna TI Latvia
TI Latvia and the Soros Foundation uncovered a dramatic increase in the cost of campaigning, especially on TV and billboard advertising during Latvias 2002 parliamentary elections. The project began monitoring advertisements in January 2002, early enough to provide the public with information about the cost of elections before voting took place in October.

Lithuania - Political Corruption Awareness Project
Transparency International Lithuanian Chapter (TILC) implemented the project whose main goal was to foster public discussion about the lack of transparency in political finance, in order to inspire parliament to come up with a legislative initiative targeting political corruption.

TI Russia
TI Russia monitored the abuse of state and public resources to favour incumbents in the parliamentary campaign of late 2003 and the presidential campaign in March 2004. The project revealed widespread abuse of the state-controlled media: official candidates received much more airtime and column inches than opposition candidates. The state resources used to support election campaigns exceeded official funding limits.

Transparency International Secretariat
A publication, produced by the Americas department in collaboration with national chapters and other civil society organisations, which analyses the experiences of citizen’s oversight in the area of political party finance in Latin America. The publication identifies best practice, challenges and potential areas for innovation.

Transparency International (Zimbabwe)
TI Zimbabwe formed a coalition with 33 civil society partners to monitor the 2000 general elections. The project was much broader than election spending, focusing on all areas of electoral fraud, manipulation and malpractice. The tool was first designed and implemented to cover the June 2000 general elections, but was extended for a further period of three years to allow for more detailed monitoring of party and campaign financing irregularities and the abuse of state resources for campaign purposes. The monitoring process was country-wide.