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‘Lordy Me!’ Can donations buy you a British peerage? A study in the link between party political funding and peerage nominations, 2005–2014

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Abstract

Trust in political institutions has declined across developed democracies. One of the main reasons cited for this lack of trust has been the role of money in politics, while standing up to ‘big money’ has been a common rallying cry of populists of both left- and right-wing variants. Political scientists have tried to examine the role of big money in two main steps: firstly, by showing that money can buy access to legislators; and, secondly, that legislators are thereby more responsive to the wishes of donors when writing and voting on laws. Researchers have used experiments and other techniques to show that Congressional staffs are more responsive to requests from donors compared to others and have also shown aggregate trends in responsiveness to the preferences of the wealthier. In this paper we try and go one step further: to show that donors can become legislators. We do this by looking at the example of the House of Lords. Compiling an original dataset of large donations and nominations for peerages, the authors show that, when the ‘usual suspects’ for a position, like former MPs and party workers, are accounted for, donations seem to play an outsize role in accounting for the remaining peers.
Vol.:(0123456789)
British Politics (2020) 15:135–159
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-019-00109-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
‘Lordy Me!’ Can donations buy you aBritish peerage?
Astudy inthelink betweenparty political funding
andpeerage nominations, 2005–2014
SimonRadford1· AndrewMell2· SethAlexanderThevoz3
Published online: 14 March 2019
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract
Trust in political institutions has declined across developed democracies. One of the
main reasons cited for this lack of trust has been the role of money in politics, while
standing up to ‘big money’ has been a common rallying cry of populists of both
left- and right-wing variants. Political scientists have tried to examine the role of
big money in two main steps: firstly, by showing that money can buy access to leg-
islators; and, secondly, that legislators are thereby more responsive to the wishes of
donors when writing and voting on laws. Researchers have used experiments and
other techniques to show that Congressional staffs are more responsive to requests
from donors compared to others and have also shown aggregate trends in respon-
siveness to the preferences of the wealthier. In this paper we try and go one step
further: to show that donors can become legislators. We do this by looking at the
example of the House of Lords. Compiling an original dataset of large donations
and nominations for peerages, the authors show that, when the ‘usual suspects’ for
a position, like former MPs and party workers, are accounted for, donations seem to
play an outsize role in accounting for the remaining peers.
Keywords Party funding· Donations· House of lords· Populism· Money in
politics· British politics· Influence
* Simon Radford
sradford@usc.edu
1 University ofSouthern California, LosAngeles, USA
2 Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, Oxford, UnitedKingdom
3 Nuffield College, Oxford University, Oxford, UnitedKingdom
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... This has supported the growth of a market for consultant support estimated by Parvin (2007) to be worth around £1.9 billion. Of particular interest to researchers appears to have been corporate and personal donations -two examples are treated here, but others exist (see Mell, et al., 2020). ...
... Separately, while research has been conducted into CPA and even private political activities and donations in the UK -examining such questions as whether donations to political parties increase donors' likelihood of being elevated to the peerage (Mell, et al., 2020) -little research has tended to make use of the full range of publicly-available datasets with regards to meetings and the use of consultant lobbying firms, despite the opportunities to gather new insights into issues of the extent, scope, and type of CPA conducted over time. ...
Preprint
As scepticism and suspicion towards Chinese investment in and trade with the UK has increased, so too has scrutiny of the influence of the Chinese state and Chinese companies in the British political system, culminating in high-profile news stories about the involvement of China's Huawei in the rollout of 5G technology, or even publication of warnings by British intelligence about political interference by agents of the Chinese state. This study applies database analysis and text-matching techniques to the now large-scale publicly-available datasets on corporate political activity (CPA) in the UK, to identify those activities undertaken by or linked with the largest Chinese firms and Chinese-focused lobby groups, and to review in concert unpublished data obtained directly from the regulator on Chinese firms' engagement with consultant lobbyists. In doing so, patterns are identified which align with observations in the published literature on Chinese firms' approach to CPA, such as that they typically adopt 'relational' strategies with a view to forming strong working relationships. A steady increase in Chinese firms' meetings with British government Ministers is observed, but this is not accompanied by increasing use of consultant lobbyists to conduct registerable activities, perhaps reflecting a conscious strengthening by firms of their in-house capabilities. Focused discussions are made of CPA conducted by Huawei and Syngenta, the latter acquired by state-owned ChemChina in 2017, illustrating Chinese firms' willingness to adopt more typically Western strategies in certain circumstances. Recommendations are made for future research.
... There is recent UK research suggesting donations can also have a direct impact on who attains political office, undermining political equality in a different way. The researchers ( Mell et al, 2015, p.25) provide evidence that "big donors" are disproportionately likely to be nominated for elevation to the House of Lords. Mell and his colleagues say that while this does not prove causation, the odds of this being pure coincidence "are roughly the same as those of entering Britain's National Lottery five consecutive times, and winning the jackpot on each occasion." ...
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