• Politics

Politics & corruption

The disclosure of political accounts is a necessary condition for holding political actors accountable and reducing political corruption. This guide operationalises the concept that disclosure effectively promotes accountability within the larger social, political, and historical context of emerging democracies. 

The Guide also outlines lessons learned from the Money and Politics Programme (MAP) pilot programmes of IFES. Some of these lessons learned include:

• political will, commitment, and consensus are necessary for reform and can be achieved through an enabling event or developed over time
• successful reform initiatives can best be achieved through working with a reform advocate, one committed political finance regulator on both the senior and staff levels, and one committed, local civil society group with access to resources
• if voters are expected to use the MAP database and to apply an effective political sanction when they cast their ballots, they will need to benefit from such financial transparency as close to the polling day as possible, but not after it
• simpler disclosure rules and procedures are more likely to be understood and followed
• civil society organisations, media, and scholars must be engaged by sector and as a group in order to effectively monitor the process
• attempting to support a specific reform in an imperfect or inappropriate environment can fail without the requisite public support and/or political will
• political finance regulators are under-funded and understaffed, and the MAP project is unlikely to be successful unless minimum requirements are met
  

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