ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to offer a fresh perspective on campaign finance by looking at political parties as key organisations of electoral campaigns. The chapter defends three claims: (1) that parties are ideally suited to organise campaigns in accordance with the democratic principle of collective self-rule, because they realise campaigns' epistemic, justificatory, and motivational functions; (2) that campaign finance scholars ought to include parties in their normative accounts because these regulations affect parties’ capacity to fulfil campaign functions; and (3) that political theorists working on parties should consider the effect of different financing schemes on parties’ internal structure, because the former may either worsen or counteract possible drawbacks of the latter. After the introduction, the chapter illustrates the normative conception of political parties and then shows in the second section how they are ideally suited to organise electoral campaigns. The third section introduces the debate around campaign finance regulations, while the fourth clarifies why normative theorists working on parties and campaign finance should talk to each other and outlines a potential benefit of the voucher system for intra-party democracy. The conclusion wraps up the argument.
