The funding of political parties in North America

This chapter examines the funding of political parties in the United States and, by way of comparison, Canada. In the case of the United States the period covered is from the 1830s to the mid-1890s while with Canada the focus is on the period from Confederation (1867) until about the First World War. Neither country at that time met all the criteria that today would be regarded as necessary for a regime to be considered a democracy. In particular, large sections of the electorate were disenfranchised. Women could not vote, nor in the United States before the end of the Civil War could the vast majority of black people. Not only were slaves deprived of the vote but so too were many so-called ‘free’ black men. Moreover, the Reconstruction era (1865-77) provided only a brief interlude of black enfranchisement; coercion of black voters commenced in the South after that, and from the mid-1890s onwards Jim Crow laws effectively removed civil rights for black people, including the right to vote.