Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) published new book publications Municipal elections 2014: Financing of campaign in elections of mayors of regional centers of Slovakia. The publication was released as one of the outputs of the international project Transparency of Local Government Elections in Central and Eastern Europe. Its co-authors are researchers who in the years 2014 – 2015 were involved in the carrying out of the project: Grigorij Mesežnikov, Jaroslav Pilát, Peter Kunder and Ján Bartoš.

The authors of the book point out that it is clear that political parties and individual candidates without sufficient funding of their election activities are barely able to carry out an effective campaign to appeal to the appropriate number of voters and convince them that solutions they offer deserve citizens’ support and thereby will give to these parties and candidates a mandate to operate in the elected bodies. Financing of the campaign in a democratic society must abide certain norms and principles, among which the priority principles are equality and transparency. Interests of citizens and public authorities in a democratic system require that the existing model of financing of political activities, including election campaigns, was fair and transparent and that the existing control mechanisms effectively prevent corrupt practices that would violate the mentioned principles.

Download: Komunálne voľby 2014. Financovanie kampane (pdf, in Slovak)

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Publication was introduced in december 2015 at a conference on transparency of election campaign.