Beiträge der Unternehmen zur Parteienfinanzierung. Wer spendet an wen? Und warum?

Abstract

In Germany — different from France and the USA — direct party finance provided by corporate bodies is legal. In order to predict both the willingness to donate and the specific distribution of the money among the political camps, a model is developed that takes the structural characteristics of companies as starting point. The model is based on data of the contributions of the 100 largest German companies in the election year 2002. According to this, contributions and their distribution depend largely on the presence of interlocking directorates and on the industry a company belongs to. In the year 2002, the 100 largest companies gave 55.8 percent of their contributions to the CDU and CSU, 22.1 percent to the SPD, 17.7 percent to the FDP, and 4.4 percent to the Greens. The PDS did not receive any contributions from the 100 largest companies. Two logics of party finance can be distinguished in this context: first, the systematic support for only one of the political camps in order to strengthen it; second, contributions cultivating all fields of the political landscape.