Page 32 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

DEMAND FOR DURABLE AND NON-DURABLE POLITICAL GOODS

interests. By this token, we expect to see unions and parties allocate relatively

more of their contributions to candidates and committees (including parties)
than the things identified as non-durable political goods.

As Table 4 shows, advocacy groups in our sample spent about 436

million in three election cycles; 17 percent as administrative expenses, 13
percent as campaign expenses, 5 percent on media, 10 percent on fundraising,

and almost half of the money were contributions to parties, candidates, or
committees. In each cycle, more or less equal amounts were spent, i.e. $145

million. Political party-affiliated groups spent almost two-thirds of the money,
$277 million; union and independent spent around $80 million each. On

average, each political party affiliated groups spent $17.3 million; unions

$6.8million; and independents $2.4 million. It is interesting to note that the
independents spent much less than the other two types of groups. This reflects

a pattern of single-issue, single-state involvement. Moreover, independents

spent 23 percent of their money on fund raising.
Each conservative group spent $12 million, almost twice as much as

the average liberal group ($6.5 million each). Groups with unknown
ideological designation spent the least -- $2.4 million each. Furthermore,

independents spent 27 percent of their money on fund raising. Finally, when
we divide the groups based on the frequency of their appearance, either in

one cycle or in three cycles, we observe that the one-shot groups spent $1.8

million each compared to $11.7 million for three-cycle groups. One-shot
groups also spent 13 percent of their money on fund raising (compared to

only 4 percent of three-cycle groups). Clearly, one-shot, independent,
unknown groups are spending much less than the others; and they have big

fund raising expenditures. All in all, these groups appear as grass-roots
organizations relative to party and union-affiliated ones.

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