정치자금 규제와 평가

Abstract

Political funds mean any and all expenses required for politicians or political parties to engage in politics. From the viewpoint of politicians or political parties, they want much more political funds to be raised easily for their political activities. However, there are various conflicts of interests in political activities and adjustment has to be made for a policy decision and therefore, provision of political funds becomes an important means to increase political influence. Political process which only prefers and respects benefit of people with financial ability for such means will be spoiled to money politics and will bring political corruption and therefore, regulation is unavoidable. Nevertheless, regulation on political funds, e.g. regulation on funds provider or people who are allowed for fund-raising, or setting upper-limit or lower-limit amount, will bring up a problem of equality, which causes substantive difference of political influence. Unbalance in distribution of political funds also raises important problem of equality. Meantime, regulation is not everything because regulation on political funds not only is a problem of discrimination but also guarantees freedom of people’s political expression through political funds and shows level of the guarantee. Thus, this thesis assesses validity of regulation on political funds which are recognized in our Political Fund Law, i.e. party expenditure, donation, support payments, and government subsidies. With respect to donation system, it investigates whether reintroduction of designated donation system is implemented and whether a corporation or an organization is permitted to donate political funds. And, with respect to support payments system, it reviews; first, validity of regulation on appointor of individual supporters’ association and second, validity of abolition of party supporters’ association and recognition on party supporters’ association pursuant to decision of the Constitutional Court. Finally, with respect to government subsidies, it discusses necessity of government subsidies and adequacy of payment criteria.