Slow convergence or no change at all? The development of west european party funding regimes, 2003-2013

In my recent book on the politics of party funding, I argued that West European party funding systems have converged (Koß 2011).¹ By “converged,” I mean that a cross-party, cross-national consensus about appropriate regulations of party funding has developed. Convergence can be defined, however, as “a process of ‘becoming’ rather than a condition of ‘being’ more alike. . . . In comparative research, therefore, the essential theoretical dimension is temporal rather than spatial” (Bennett 1991, 219). In practice, this means that there are still salient differences among European nations’ systems but that these differences have become smaller over time. This...