The Cost of Democracy

Hartosh Singh Bal, 3QuarksDaily

Time Magazine declared it the year of the protester, clubbing together what was happening in regions as different as the Arab world, the US and India. While it is easy to find commonalities among the young, urban and largely middle-class protesters who came out on the streets, in some cases they were protesting against the tyranny of their governments and asking for democracy, in other cases they were protesting the shape democracy had come to acquire in their countries. The occupy Wall Street movement and the India against Corruption movement both represent similar sentiments. In the US the anger was directed against the influence of corporate on the democratic system largely through electoral funding, in India it was against corruption with the understanding that the source of high corruption was the cycle that went from the spending of vast sums of money (often illegally) for the elections to raising money when in power (often illegally) for the next elections.

As the countries making their way to democracy will find out in their own time, the funding of elections and its influence on the polity is the most problematic aspects of democracy. While much is made of local factors in estimating the cost of elections, much of the spending in elections is actually independent of such factors. Equalizing for the population size of each constituency and the difference in living standards gives a fair estimate across countries and time periods for election spending, especially in countries unconstrained by effective legislation on campaign spending, such as the US or India.

In the 2010 elections the average spending of the winning candidate for the US House of Representatives was $ 1.4 million. Factor in the ratio of the US population over 435 House seats as opposed to the Indian population spread over 543 Lok Sabha seats, allow for the GDP in terms of purchasing power parity and you arrive at a ballpark figure of average spending of Rs 1.3 crore (about $ 250,000) per Lok Sabha  by winning candidates.  Even though figures for Indian elections are difficult to calculate this is certainly the right order of magnitude for the expenditure in the 2009 elections. As a check one can use the base figure of spending in the 2000 US House election, adjust for population growth, inflation and increase in GDP (PPP) to arrive at a surprisingly accurate figure for the spending in 2010. This holds true for Indian elections as well if comparisons are made between 2004 and 2009. While the exactitude of such an estimate can be disputed on many grounds, I believe it captures the essential fact that much of the spending in an election can actually be accounted for in terms of population and living standards of a country. More…