​Money plays a central role in determining whose voices are heard in the political process. The revolving door between business and politics distorts the language in which political actors operate. When those businesses are illicit, it further threatens the integrity of electoral processes and undermines the mechanisms for political accountability.

The influence of dirty money in politics is a pervasive problem across both the developing and developed world. Yet it is an issue that the international community has thus far been reluctant to engage with fully, given the many sensitivities involved.

Drawing on extensive research that International IDEA has led on the threat that transnational illicit networks pose on democratic politics, and a series of case studies commissioned in Latin America, the Baltic States and West Africa, this event will consider the connections between illicit networks, corrupt politicians, electoral cycles and political competition; the institutional dynamics that enable these relationships; how international development actors can respond to the impacts of organised crime on governance in developing countries, and how political financing can be regulated more rigorously.