Introduction

In virtually all democratic societies, political donations serve as a significant medium through which command over both energies and resources can be achieved. Most of the corruption scandals have occurred, have increased in scope, or have been disclosed, only after the Tokyo Roundtable conference on “Theories and Practices of Political Finance and Election Administration” took place in 1989. The discussion was held under the auspices of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Political Finance and Political Corruption and the Institute for Political Studies in Japan. Information about the size and intensity of most of corruption scandals was not available to the participants: thus, they were not so alarmed. Despite the absence of such information, the participants held a detailed and comparative discussion of legal and institutional regulations concerning political finance, electoral systems, and electoral administration.