“Regulating Political Campaigns – An Unavoidable Compromise?”

Emese Szilágyi has posted this draft on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Legislators in Europe and elsewhere try to enact campaign-regulations which help to preserve the fairness of the political competition. These rules have the same aim: to guarantee the idea of political equality. But political equality means more, than the principle of “one person, one vote”. It involves the idea that everybody must have the same opportunity to influence the outcome of the elections, everybody must have the very same possibility to spread his or her views regarding to political issues and the public is entitled to receive those information about the rival arguments in order to be able to form a considered decision at the end of the campaign. These arguments highlight the crucial importance of the freedom of expression during campaign-periods. But in many cases the campaign-rules raise the question: whether they are acceptable regulations on the freedom of expression or they are too widely defined. In my brief article I intend to explore considerations which prove us that there is no actual contradiction between the freedom of expression and political equality.

Share this: