The Grant for Change
Being a political candidate is hard work. You need a lot of skills, must be well-known and you need loads of money. As we want everybody to be able to become a member of a parliament, local- or regional council, we need a pool of money to support candidates that lack the above resources. The idea of our grant is to support marginalised people to cross the preliminary stage to get into politics.
Challenges: vertical inequality, socioeconomic discrimination, political underrepresentation, polarisation
Constraints posed upon people with financial burdens continue to limit the means through which individuals are able to interact with both local and national political systems. With the increasing tendency for governments to extend the periods of time during which elections take place, this establishes a profound economic cost upon representatives, regardless of political affiliation, that they must compensate for using their own economic resources. Due to the systemic economic differences prevalent within society, these restrictions to participation particularly affect marginalised groups. Given that the responsibility of care is often located upon women, and that the capacity for involvement amongst working classes within politics is constrained by the balancing between sustaining oneself and active participation, a troubling precedent is set in which only certain demographics can continually participate in political campaigns. This leaves us with a condition in which certain groups become apathetic to the overall conditions in their country, believing their role to be negligible in supporting a secure state that works to their benefit. In many countries, people’s trust in the government is decreasing. For example, according to the Pew Research Center’s ‘global attitudes survey’, in 2019 only 49 of the respondents thought that the state is run for the benefit of all the people. Astoundingly, 64 percent of the respondents believed that elected officials do not care about what people like them think.
The current system is predicated upon allying oneself to political parties to get elected, as these are the only bodies that can provide some form of limited funding. This is problematic, as one becomes wholly dependent upon an ideological institution to sustain democracy, which hinders constructive dissent from taking place due to the chokehold the parties have over the candidates that can run for them during elections. Given the economic costs of running, without the support of parties, it is particularly challenging for new individuals to break through into politics. Overall, the consequence of this is that diversity within parliament is throttled, which hinders the motivation for new individuals to enter into politics. This obviously leads to the question: how can we resolve the financial hurdle that prevents the representation of voices within democratic systems? Diversity matters in our politics and a lack of that prevents progressive political ambition.
In addition to a lack of diversity, parties themselves prevent representational democracy from functioning. For instance, top-down led parties prohibit the democratic process within the party. New and aspiring politicians may be neglected for older people that have been part of the party for a longer time and to whom party funding is directed. Furthermore, as parties strive to reach unanimity within the party, this restricts multiplicity and thus politicians with alternative proposals lose their opportunity to campaign. As a result, party structures are not inclusive to new and young aspiring politicians. However, the grant for change can counter this limiting party structure and allows aspiring politicians to circumvent party processes and form their personal political programme. The grant for change offers inspiration and incentives for change both on the party-level and for individuals through its funding.
Proposal: a financial grant for political involvement
We propose the Grant for Change to fund candidates with fewer financial resources. The grant works as shown in figure 1. First, people apply and give evidence of their financial situation and the number of signatures they have gathered. The signatures are necessary to make sure that funding is given only to people who are really willing to run for parliament and have a certain support base to start with. Thus, our grant does not automatically give every individual the chance to get into politics, but only those who put a significant effort into garnering political support. The grant serves to enhance political participation and diversity in politics, irrespective of political views. The anonymous applications are checked by a digital system which in certain instances is complemented by a committee evaluating applicants. The chosen applicants receive money for campaign financing and for living costs.
Impact: innovating political party structures via enhanced diversity
The grant system gives people the opportunity to get into a parliament or a local or regional council. It gives people the freedom to openly speak their minds because they are not dependent on somebody for support. Without the economic barriers, getting access to politics becomes easier. If more people get the chance to become a member of parliament or a council, there will be more innovative, diverse and fresh ideas in parliament. Fresh ideas lead to better policies and laws because more perspectives are considered. When individuals of demographic groups that are currently not involved in politics get involved, whole demographic groups will feel more satisfied and represented as their needs are more deeply and accurately addressed in the parliament. Thus, democracy is strengthened. More people will get interested in politics because it will no longer be something only for privileged people with no worries about money but something that is open for everybody and responsive to everybody – irrespective of economic factors. Lastly, the grant could catalyse innovation among the political parties by circumventing the ingrained party structure.