The Public Budget’ Coverage of the Electoral Campaigns and Elections (2017-2024) and the Prevention of the Abuse of State Resources for Free and Fair Elections in Albania

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the use of public budgets to finance the electoral process, including electoral campaigns and elections of the political parties, candidates and other electoral subjects. The focus in this paper is in organizing free and fair elections, by preventing the abuse of the state resources, considered as one of the main deficiencies of the new democracies, including Albania from the year 1991- onward. The abuse of state resources, as an important feature of political finance, focuses on the problems resulting from the undue influence of the incumbent political party that wants to stay in power as long as possible. It is related with the funds or other resources, gained by political parties and candidates that benefit the incumbent party, and it results in undue influence of the later, and prevents other political parties and candidates from having a fair electoral contest. The main research question of this paper is: what are the programs and activities that are funded by the public (national) budgets related with the parliamentary and local elections and what are the financing’ regulations and their effects? Also, does the government create a fair starting point for all of the political parties and candidates, as a mean to preventing the abuse of state resources? As a result, this paper will study the approved budgets and the differences that arise from year 2017- until now, and it will analyze the total spending or expenditures for the elections, given to CEC and to the electoral subjects. The methodology used here is the combination of qualitative methods, and by using primary and secondary sources of information from different international and national relevant institutions and the analysis of the public budgets, for the budgetary years of 2017-2024.

Received: 12 February 2024 / Accepted: 17 March 2024 / Published: 23 March 2024