The government of the Czech Republic has just fallen over a suspect campaign donation, while in Washington, the Clinton administration fends off inquiries over the fundraising tactics the President and Vice-President used to bankroll their successful 1996 campaign. Even Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, until now unassailably popular, has been plunged into his first political crisis over his reversal of Labour party policy banning tobacco sponsorship shortly after receiving a large contribution from a major beneficiary of tobacco money, the Formula One car racing association.

Cornered, politicians tend to frame the issue rather too narrowly. Whether Bill Clinton was actually sitting at his desk in the Oval Office when he made all those phone calls soliciting funds or whether he was tucked in bed in the White House living quarters is not really at the heart of the campaign funding scandal, whatever the law or Janet Reno might say. For that matter, it isn't even out-and-out illegality, as such -- for example, the alleged influence peddling by senior federal Liberals in Quebec -- that ought truly to concern us. It is what goes on openly and above board, in full view of the law, that is the continuing scandal of campaign finance.

The tendency for money to find its own level has defeated all attempts to control it. U.S. election laws, enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandal, place strict limits on contributions to political candidates and parties, though no such restriction apply to campaign spending. Canada, by contrast, limits spending, while leaving contributions more or less unregulated. Neither system works in the way it was intended; it is all too easy in either case for money to flow around the barriers that have been set in front of it, by means of so-called "third parties." While contributors to the Democratic or Republican party may be limited in how much they can donate directly, nothing stops them from making out a cheque to an "unaffiliated" Political Action Committee, which then redirects the money to the party or candidate of their choice. Likewise, the limits that govern how much Canadian political parties -- or, in Quebec, official referendum committees -- may spend promoting their cause do not apply to independent advocacy groups. So the result is either the sort of grotesque free-for-all observed in the United States, or the equally unsavoury laws muzzling third-party political advertising that Canadian governments have seen fit to introduce.

Of the two, certainly, it is better to err on the side of free speech. But are these the only choices? If we must have some limits, then let's think clearly about what we might be trying to achieve by them. It isn't, surely, equality between the parties that we seek, which is the implicit rationale for spending limits. The constitution speaks of the equality of individuals, not the equality of political parties.

Parties, after all, are merely a vehicle for groups of like-minded citizens seeking to influence the political process. It is their contributors, really, who are spending the money: the party is just a convenient front. Viewed in this way, the distinction between spending and contributions breaks down. By limiting individual donations, we limit individual spending.

This has a certain intuitive appeal: every individual, no matter their income, should have roughly equal ability to participate in the national debate, in the same way that every individual has just one vote. (I say roughly, since no matter how low you set the limits, it will be more affordable to a rich person than a poor one.) Limiting spending at the party level, perversely, makes individuals unequal: if all parties spend the same amount, then the more contributors a party has, the less each is entitled to spend individually.

But if it is each individual whose voice we want to ensure gets an equal hearing, then it surely does not matter what they choose to say. That is, it is the total amount that an individual is entitled to spend in support of his or her chosen political causes that we might wish to limit, not how this is distributed between different parties and advocacy groups. Suppose, for example, we set an overall ceiling of $10,000. Then it would not matter whether $5000 went to Party X, $3000 to Party Y, and $2000 to Concerned Citizens for Z, or any other combination.

This would put political parties and advocacy groups on an equal footing.

There would be no reason to apply more severe spending restrictions on third-party groups: since the total amount that any one person could contribute would be capped, a party could gain no advantage by setting up phony advocacy groups to spend money on its behalf. More on this next time.