In Germany, someone like Hackett would probably never have got the opportunity.

Even candidates who campaign for a direct mandate in personalized proportional systems must make nice to their party if they want to have a safe fallback slot on the slate.

Even where donations are allowed, they can't be sufficiently targeted.

Unless the recipient is one of the smaller parties...

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

While the blogosphere has recently turned the tables, my concern is about donor fatigue. Look at some of the comments whenever a new thread goes up about giving to X or Y. You always have a few people who simply cannot give or have given this month or are doing without something rather basic because they are giving. How long can this go on?

Despite these concerns, fundraising in the US works because of the structure of its electoral system. This was figured out; something of a mass consumerism adopted to campaign finance. Get lots of small donations and you can outdo just a small number of larger donations. The analysis looked at the system and figured out how to make a difference.

So...

The EUlogosphere or EUblogosphere (or whatever, take your pick) needs to see how it can make a difference. I totally agree with Colman that we should think about this. Let's look at the current structures/processes and do an analysis to see the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats.

We need to look at this as two different, yet connected networks.

The first is a networking of different national political systems. The political systems of all European states are much more connected than we realize. We have to find those links and use them. One way, for example, is simple information flows; the diffusion of good policy examples from one society to another. We can serve as a channel for this type of policy information diffusion. Another is to work on the national dailies in the ways that the dKosers do...letters to the editor and such.

The second is to look at the EU institutional network. In this one, Parliament is the first opportunity, but we need to find other ways of approaching the EU network as well. It's precisely because the EU has not been a system with great accessibility and permeability that we had the Non-neen (sp?) votes were so easy to come by. (I'm not saying that this was the only explanation; all complex phenomena are multi-determined.)

We're not going to figure this out today in one thread, particularly not in early August. But this is a good dialogue for us to be having. Jerome et al have provided the first step in creating this, now let's see what comes next.

It is an important issue to be discussed on European Tribune, as well as Whataboutbob's
Creating A New Left Economic Manifesto.

We should make these issues (and some others) permanent threads. Is it possible to create permanent threads?  

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

I'll no doubt end up doing some introductions of myself later, but for now I guess I should stick to the topic, except to say, UK born and currently resident, have lived in the US, Australia, NL and DE over the years.

1. It is possible, with trust, to circumvent these rules, for example, send the money to $citizen who then donates it.

2. The first big issue is of course that (IMHO) the UK (and other EU electoral systems I am familiar with) money donations are just not as important as they are in the US. For better or worse, our systems have evolved in different directions. This is good because pure money is not so dominant, but it also can mean it is very difficult to lend useful support a candidate from outside her constituency.

3. Do you/we (since I am a newcomer, found the place via dKos just recently) actually have as coherent a general thrust of policy as the US Democratic party does? (Not that they are that coherent of course, but that's another issue, just that that is the backdrop to Kossack influence.)

4. I second all the posts suggesting that we do need to build a pan-European structure of power, but in the absence of a single party to adopt (the way dKos follows the Dems) is there a set of principles existing (that I am, as a newcomer, not aware of?) to guide our efforts?