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The Political Ecology of Campaign Contributions in Canada: A Constituency-Level Analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Munroe Eagles
Munroe Eagles
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
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Abstract

This article explores the constituency dimension of campaign financing in the 1984 and 1988 federal elections in Canada. The analysis uncovers considerable variability in the capacity of constituency parties to attract campaign donations. These variations appear to be related to the past local and regional strengths of parties, to the expected closeness of the current contest, and to whether incumbents are running for re-election. Multivariate analyses suggest that these political variables have a broadly consistent impact on fund-raising after other features of the socio-economic diversity of constituencies have been controlled.

Résumé

Cet article porte sur le financement des campagnes, au niveau des circonscriptions, durant les élections fédérates canadiennes de 1984 et 1988. L'étude révèle que la capacité des sections locales de parti de trouver du financement électoral varie grandement. Ces variations dépendent de l'enracinement local et régional des partis, du caractére visiblement contesté de l'élection en cours et de la présence des députés sortants dans la course. Une analyse multivariée suggère que ces variables politiques ont dans l'ensemble un effet assez constant sur les campagnes de souscriptions après contrôle d'autres aspects de la diversité socio-économique des circonscriptions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 535 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1992

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References

1 Quoted in Jacobson, Gary C., Money in Congressional Elections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 33Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Palda, Kristian, “The Effect of Expenditure on Political Success,” Journal of Law and Economics 18 (1975), 745–771CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Eagles, Munroe, “Money and Votes in Canada: Campaign Spending and Parliamentary Election Outcomes, 1984 and 1988,”paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Charlottetown, 1992.Google Scholar

3 For examples of the former, see Palda, Kristian, “Does Advertising Influence Votes? An Analysis of the 1966 and 1970 Quebec Elections,” this Journal 6 (1973), 638–655Google Scholar, and Palda, “The Effect of Expenditure on Political Success,” 745–71. For an example of the latter, see Coyte, Peter C. and Landon, Stuart, “The Impact of Competition on Advertising: The Case of Political Campaign Expenditures,” Canadian Journal of Economics 22 (1989), 795–818CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Seidle, F. Leslie and Paltiel, Khayyam Zev, “Party Finance, the Election Expenses Act, and Campaign Spending in 1979 and 1980,” in Penniman, Howard R., ed., Canada at the Polls, 1979 and 1980: A Study of the General Elections (Washington, D.C.: The American Enterprise Institute, 1981), 277Google Scholar.

5 Stanbury, W. T., “The Mother's Milk of Politics: Political Contributions to Federal Parties in Canada, 1974–1984,” this Journal 19 (1986), 821Google Scholar.

6 Paul Beck notes that the neglect of party organization-environment relationships occurs outside Canada also. See his “Environment and Party: The Impact of Political and Demographic Country Characteristics on Party Behavior,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974), 1243Google Scholar. There are several notable exceptions to this generalization in the Canadian context that might suggest a growing sensitivity to the local or constituency-level differentiation within and across Canadian parties. For example, see McMenemy, John, “Getting to Know the Parties by the Company We Keep: Local Sources of Party Imagery,” in Gagnon, Alain-G. and Tanguay, A. Brian, eds., Canadian Parties in Transition: Discourse, Organization, Representation (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1989), 309–330Google Scholar, and Carty, R. Kenneth, “Campaigning in the Trenches: The Transformation of Constituency Politics,” in Perlin, George C., ed., Party Democracy in Canada: The Politics of National Party Conventions (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1988), 84–96Google Scholar.

7 William Mishler's analysis of the 1965 and 1974 national election surveys, for example, reveal that only 3 and 9 per cent of the respective samples report making campaign or party contributions. See his Political Participation in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1979), 44, Table 3:1Google Scholar. Harold D. Clarke et al.'s 1988 survey found that 13 per cent of respondents reported contributing money to parties or campaigns “often” or “sometimes.” See Absence Mandate: Interpreting Change in Canadian Elections (Toronto: Gage, 1991), 39, Table 2.6Google Scholar. Recent research suggests that less than 2 percent of Canadians contributed to parties or candidates in 1984 and 1988. See Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Final Report: Reforming Electoral Democracy, Vol. 1 (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1991), 309Google Scholar.

8 Statistics Canada (Ottawa), 1981 Census of Canada: Federal Electoral Districts: Selected Social and Economic Characteristics, Statistics Canada, Catalogue Number 95–941, Volume 3—Profile Series B, July 1983; Statistics Canada (Ottawa), 1981 Census of Canada: Federal Electoral Districts: Selected Characteristics, Statistics Canada, Catalogue Number 95–901, Volume 3—Profile Series A, August 1982; and Statistics Canada (Ottawa), Canada 1986: Federal Electoral Districts—1987 Representation Order: Part 2, Statistics Canada, Catalogue Number 94–134, June 1988.

9 Electoral returns are taken from Parts I, III and IV of the Report of the Chief Electoral Officer for the Thirty-Second (1980), Thirty-Third (1984) and Thirty-Fourth (1988) federal election. Since electoral boundaries were adjusted between the 1984 and 1988 elections, the results of the 1984 election expressed in terms of the revised boundaries that were adopted in July 1988, as calculated by Elections Canada, were also employed. I am grateful to Elections Canada for supplying these raw estimates. The percentage results, and a variety of additional information on federal constituencies, are available in Eagles, Munroe, Bickerton, James P., Gagnon, Alain-G. and Smith, Patrick J., The Almanac of Canadian Politics (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Election expenses data for the 1984 and 1988 elections were obtained on magnetic tape from the National Archives of Canada. They are published for each election in The Report of the Chief Electoral Officer Respecting Election Expenses.

10 See Ersson, Svante, Janda, Kenneth and Lane, Jan-Erik, “The Logic of Political Ecology Analysis,” in Anckar, Dag, Damgaard, Erik and Valen, Henry, eds., Partier, Ideologier, Valjare: En Antologi (Abo, Finland: Akademi, 1982), 211–263Google Scholar, and Eagles, Munroe, “Political Ecology: Local Influences on the Political Behaviour of Canadians,” in Gagnon, Alain-G. and Bickerton, James P., eds., Canadian Politics: An Introduction to the Discipline (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1990), 285–307Google Scholar.

11 For “classic” statements of this perspective see Key, V. O., American State Politics: An Introduction (New York: Knopf, 1956), 229Google Scholar, and Rokkan, Stein, Citizens, Elections, Parties (New York: David McKay, 1970), 16Google Scholar.

12 Gary Jacobson's analysis of fund raising in American congressional elections, for example, found that “Contributions to both incumbents and challengers depend(s) on the degree of expected competition in the race” (Money and Congressional Elections, 73).

13 Ibid., 52–53.

14 See Krashinsky, Michael and Milne, William J., “Some Evidence on the Effect of Incumbency in Ontario Provincial Elections,” this Journal 16 (1983), 489–500Google Scholar, and their “Additional Evidence on the Effect of Incumbency in Canadian Elections,” this Journal 18 (1985), 155–165Google Scholar.

15 A partial exception is the analysis of Ontario federal constituencies found in Chapman, Randall and Palda, Kristian S., “An Econometric Analysis of the 1984 Canadian Federal Election,” Working Paper 86–11 (Kingston, Ontario: Queen's University School of Business, June 1986), 33–34Google Scholar.

16 See, for example, Milbrath, Lester W. and Goel, M. L., Political Participation (2nd ed.; Chicago: Rand McNally, 1977), 98–102Google Scholar, and Wolfinger, Raymond and Rosenstone, Steven J., Who Votes? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 34–36Google Scholar.

17 See Milbrath and Goel, Political Participation, 106–110, and Wolfinger and Rosenstone, Who Votes?, 30–34.

18 Not included in these official expense reports are a variety of financial activities that fall outside the reporting period surrounding the campaign mandated by the Canada Elections Act, though it is arguable that this caveat applies more directly to election-related expenditures as opposed to fund raising. Contributions to candidates are included in the “candidates' reports” only if they occur during the time from the date of issuance of the writs of dissolution to the polling day. Additionally, following the Alberta Court's decision in the National Citizen's Coalition challenge in 1984, the amounts raised and expended during the campaign by so-called “third parties,” or, more precisely, interest groups, went unregulated in 1984 and 1988. See Paltiel, Khayyam Zev, “Canadian Election Expense Legislation, 1963–1985: ACritical Appraisal or Was the Effort Worth It,” in Alexander, Herbert E., ed., Comparative Political Finance in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 51–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hiebert, Janet, “Fair Elections and Freedom of Expression Under the Charter,” Journal of Canadian Studies 24 (1989–1990), 72–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Charlotte Gray estimated the total cost of advertising by groups during the 1988 campaign at more than $10 million. See “Purchasing Power,” Saturday Night, March 1989, 17.

19 Whitehorn, Alan, “The NDP Election Campaign: Dashed Hopes,” in Frizzell, Alan, Pammett, Jon H. and Westell, Anthony, eds., The Canadian General Election of 1988 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1990), 44Google Scholar.

20 The NDP managed to increase its share of the popular vote in Quebec from 8.7 per cent in 1984 to approximately 14 per cent in 1988. The latter is approximately double the party's 1962–1980 average for the province, but was insufficient to give them any seats.

21 Stanbury's analysis of the general picture of party financing in Canada (including campaign donations) led him to make the following observation: “Perhaps the most extraordinary change in the way the three main parties raise contributions has been the Conservatives' ability to raise money from many individuals, most of whom give less than $100” (“The Mother's Milk of Politics,” 803).

22 Surich, Jo, “Purists and Pragmatists: Canadian Democratic Socialism at the Crossroads,” in Penniman, Howard R., ed., Canada at the Polls: The General Election of 1974 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1975), 135Google Scholar. Alan Whitehorn's analysis suggests that the number of concentration ridings increased from about 40–50 in the 1984 contest to 144 in the 1988 election. See his “The NDP Election Campaign: Dashed Hopes,” in Frizzell et al., The Canadian General Election of 1988, 46.

23 Paltiel, Khayyam Zev, “The Control of Campaign Finance in Canada: A Summary and Overview,” in Thorburn, Hugh G., ed., Party Politics in Canada (5th ed.; Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1985), 125–126Google Scholar.

24 Open seats (that is, those with no incumbent standing for re-election) have been associated with high levels of campaign contributions in American research. See Jacobson, Gary C., “Money and Votes Reconsidered: Congressional Elections, 1972–1982,” Public Choice 47 (1985), 28–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See Cain, Bruce, Ferejohn, John and Fiorina, Morris, The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Jacobson, Money in Congressional Elections, 72–75. Also Chapman and Palda, “An Econometric Analysis of the 1984 Canadian Federal Election,” 34, 47.

27 Jacobson, Money and Congressional Elections, 73.

28 Too much should not be made of this apparent advantage, however, since the legislated limits on permissible expenditures during the campaign period are generally not much higher than the average amounts raised by local Liberal campaigns. In other words, Conservative campaign contributions often exceed the amount that their local candidate can spend in an election.

29 For historical evidence, see Brodie, M. Janine and Jenson, Jane, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and Blake, Donald E., “The Measurement of Regionalism in Canadian Voting Patterns,” this Journal 5 (1972), 55–81Google Scholar. For the 1988 election, see Eagles, “Political Ecology,” 303.

30 See Welch, W. P., “Money and Votes: A Simultaneous Equation Model,” Public Choice 36 (1981), 215CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Welch uses median family income to measure the impact of skewed income distributions on the level of campaign expenditures.

31 Ontario is used as a baseline. Significant coefficients for regional dummy variables indicate the extent to which the region in question deviates from the pattern evident in the province of Ontario.

32 This confirms the results of a sizeable body of comparative research. See, for example, Milbrath and Goel, Political Participation, 98–100.

33 This accords with a good deal of comparative research into rural/urban differentials in political involvement. See Milbrath and Goel, Political Participation, 106–10.

34 This accords with the widely recognized comparative differential in incumbency re-election rates in the two countries. For the classic statement of the relative electoral insecurity of Canadian incumbents, see Lovink, J. A., “Is Canadian Politics Too Competitive?” this Journal 6 (1973), 341–379Google Scholar.