There is a transformation taking place in contemporary politics that we perhaps talk about far too little. It is not simply a question of left or right, nor is it confined to one particular country. And it cannot be explained merely in terms of corruption or lobbying. Something deeper is happening: the relationship between politics and economics has gradually been turned upside down.
For much of the twentieth century, politics, for better or worse, claimed to have a direction. There were major ideologies, major parties, and competing visions of society. Communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives, Christian democrats and nationalists could have radically different ideas about society, the economy, the role of the state and even human nature. But they had at least one thing in common: they knew where they wanted society to go.
The great ideologies also produced tragedies, mistakes, authoritarian regimes and spectacular failures. There is therefore no reason to romanticise them as though the past were somehow better. Yet they served one important function: they placed politics before interests. First came the vision of society; then came the economic policies needed to pursue that vision.
With the decline of the great ideologies and the transformation of political parties into increasingly electoral and media-driven organisations, something changed. Politics gradually lost part of its ability to define an independent direction. And when politics loses its vision, it inevitably becomes more dependent on those who possess what politics needs in order to survive: money, organisation, access to the media, networks of influence and the ability to mobilise support.
The problem, then, is not simply that political parties have donors. The real problem is the relationship that develops between the donor and the politician.
In a healthy democracy, politics should be able to say: this is the society I want to build; these are my principles; these are the objectives I consider important. Then, on the basis of that vision, it should seek the support of citizens and the resources necessary to put its programme into practice.
Naturally, a donor may share that vision. A company, an association, a professional organisation or a wealthy individual may decide to support a particular political movement because they believe in its ideas or because they consider those ideas compatible with their own interests. There is not necessarily anything scandalous about that.
The problem begins when the process is reversed.
When the politician no longer has a project and looks for people willing to support it, but someone with financial resources looks for a politician without a sufficiently strong vision and provides the resources necessary to make that politician advance an agenda that did not originate in politics, but in the interests of the donor.
At that point, politics risks becoming a profession devoted to representing someone else's interests.
The politician continues to speak to voters, make speeches, appear on television and publish messages on social media. Formally, he continues to make decisions through democratic institutions. But the fundamental question becomes a different one: how much of what he does actually comes from his own idea of the country, and how much comes from the interests of those on whom he depends financially and politically?
There is no need to imagine secret conspiracies or dark rooms where a handful of people decide the fate of the world. Reality can be much more ordinary and, precisely for that reason, much harder to confront.
Organised economic interests naturally seek to influence politics. That is what they do. The energy industry defends its interests, the automotive industry does the same, as do agriculture, pharmaceuticals, finance, technology and defence. Environmental groups, trade unions and social organisations also seek to influence public policy. In a free society, it is perfectly normal for organised interests to exist.
Their existence is not, in itself, the democratic problem.
The problem arises when those interests become stronger than the political system they are supposed merely to persuade.
If a politician supports renewable energy, for example, there is nothing inherently illegitimate about receiving support from people or companies operating in the renewable-energy sector. But the principle should work the other way around: the politician should support renewable energy because he believes it is in the country's interest and, precisely for that reason, seek support from people and businesses whose interests are compatible with that vision.
The difference may seem subtle, but it is fundamental.
In the first case, the politician has a conviction and finds donors who are compatible with it.
In the second, the donor finds a politician and asks, explicitly or implicitly, for an economic interest to be turned into public policy.
The same principle applies to every other sector.
A politician who wants to protect livestock farming should not seek funding from the plant-based food industry and then adjust his programme to its interests. Conversely, a politician who genuinely believes that meat consumption should be dramatically reduced should be able to seek support from those who share that vision, rather than pretending to believe something else in order to obtain funding from interests fundamentally opposed to his programme.
The point, therefore, is not to decide which interests are good and which are bad.
The point is to decide who comes first.
Politics or the donor?
This question becomes even more important when we consider modern finance and the growing concentration of capital. Large financial institutions, investment funds and major corporations can possess enormous economic influence. That does not mean that every large investor directly controls a government, nor that every political decision is the result of an order issued by some giant investment fund. Such claims would be simplistic and, in many cases, simply untrue.
But the problem of concentrated economic power remains.
When an increasing share of the resources required for political competition passes through a relatively small number of powerful actors, the risk inevitably grows that politicians will begin to regard the interests of those who provide the resources necessary to sustain them as political priorities.
And that is how democracy can continue to exist formally while gradually becoming hollow in substance.
People still vote, but the alternatives become increasingly similar.
Governments change, but certain major economic directions remain essentially untouched.
The people change, the slogans change, the colours of the parties change, but the boundaries of what is considered politically possible are increasingly defined by economic interests that politics is either unable or unwilling to challenge.
This is also where we can understand the problem created by the decline of ideology.
The old ideologies had at least one characteristic that we may be missing today: they were demanding. They forced politicians to declare where they stood. They imposed a certain degree of consistency. They offered answers about the economy, the state, property, work, family, society and international relations.
Today, politicians can change positions with remarkable speed, political parties can reshape their programmes according to the electoral climate, and political campaigns can be built more around communication than around a coherent vision.
This does not mean that we should return to the ideologies of the twentieth century.
Perhaps what we need is something different: not absolute ideologies, but principles strong enough to prevent politics from becoming a blank surface on which economic interests can simply write their own agenda.
Politics needs to recover its own idea of the future.
It should be able to say: this is the kind of economy we want, this is the kind of society we want, this is how we believe the relationship between state and market should work, this is the energy model we consider desirable, this is our industrial policy, this is our vision of welfare, this is where we believe our country should stand in the world.
Only then should it ask who can help finance that project.
That reversal of perspective could restore dignity to politics.
We do not necessarily have to eliminate political donors.
We have to make sure that donors cannot purchase a political agenda from politicians who have no agenda of their own.
The difference is enormous.
A democracy can tolerate lobbying. It can even benefit from organised competition between different interests, because a complex society needs its various groups to have the opportunity to make themselves heard.
What democracy cannot afford is for a lobby to become so indispensable that it can determine what political agenda must be pursued.
That is why transparency over political funding matters. So do traceable financial flows, strict conflict-of-interest rules, limits on the concentration of political funding and, above all, a different political culture.
Because no law can ever completely replace the individual responsibility of politicians.
A politician should be able to look a donor in the eye and say:
"You can support my project, but you cannot write it for me."
That should be the real dividing line.
Political funding should not buy politics.
It should fund politics that already exists.
Politics must come before money.
First there should be a vision. Then a programme. Then public support. And only after that should come the search for the resources required to put that programme into practice.
Not the other way around.
Money should not be allowed to search for a politician without ideas and turn him into its institutional representative.
It should be the politician — or the political party — with a clear idea of what it wants to achieve who seeks out citizens, businesses, associations and organised groups that share that vision and are willing to support it.
In the end, the problem facing contemporary democracy may be reduced to a single question:
Who should hire whom?
Should politics hire money, putting capital at the service of a collective project?
Or should money hire politics, turning politicians into the executors of private interests?
The answer should be obvious.
If we want to preserve democracy, politics must remain capable of deciding where society is going.
It can then look for people willing to pay for the journey.
But we cannot allow those who pay for the journey to decide the destination.
