FINANCING POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE WORLD AS A FACTOR OF MINIMIZING CORRUPTION

Abstract

INTRODUCTION In the whole world it is a well-known fact proved by scientists that corruption can accompany the process of financing political parties. This is exactly why the problem of financing elections campaigns is relevant not only in Ukraine, but also in the political life of all developed countries. According to the National agency of preventing corruption, the amount for the state funding of parties in Ukraine in 2018 was 513 million 671 thousand UAH. 1 At the same time, the results of the public survey conducted by the «Democratic initiatives» Foundation and the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political studies named after Oleksandr Razumkov show that Ukrainians are not ready to finance political parties at the expense of the state’s budget. Thus, 76% of Ukrainians do not support the idea of financing political parties from the State Budget and 40% of Ukrainians believe that financing the parties is the task of the party’s leaders and party members. Only 13% of Ukrainians believe that political parties should be financed by the state, and 14% believe that businessmen should finance them. The Director of the «Democratic Initiatives» Foundation named after Ilko Kucheriv and I. Bekeshkina notes that society has a low-level of trust towards parties because they defend the interest of financial-economic leaders instead of defending the interest of people. This means that the same oligarch must finance his own party 2 . As usual, businessmen, who invest in political parties, expect to gain profit from them. In Ukraine this business could earn profit due to assignment of its protégés to the top positions in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, The Security service of Ukraine, the General Prosecutor’s