EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report examines how civil society organizations (CSOs) monitor political and campaign finance in five Asian democracies—India, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. While each country operates within its own political and regulatory context, they share common challenges in achieving transparency in political and campaign finance, including incomplete or unclear financial reporting, insufficient regulation of digital campaigning, gaps in legal frameworks, weak enforcement and limited investigative capacity on the part of electoral management bodies (EMBs). In this context, CSOs have adopted a range of strategies to address these constraints and strengthen overall transparency and accountability in campaign finance.

“CSOs have adopted a range of strategies to address constraints and strengthen overall transparency and accountability in campaign finance.”

CSOs across all five countries undertake essential roles in monitoring political and campaign finance despite operating in different political and regulatory contexts. 

In India, organizations like the Association for Democratic Reforms digitize candidate disclosures and make them publicly accessible, while Indonesian CSOs verify official reports against external data sets such as Meta’s Ad Library to identify gaps in digital spending. 

Mongolian CSOs review standardized financial reports and use the national e-receipt system for verification, although informal transactions remain difficult to capture. 

In the Philippines, CSOs extract, process and visualize data on statements of contributions and expenditures and compare it with digital advertising and field observations. 

Sri Lankan CSOs rely on published reports and right-to-information requests, supplementing them with field monitoring and, since the adoption of the 2023 campaign finance law, have begun filing cases against non-compliant candidates.

In the face of the above-mentioned challenges, CSOs serve as critical accountability actors, using a combination of document analysis, digital monitoring, field observation, and public reporting to fill systemic gaps and strengthen campaign finance transparency across the region.

This report proposes a methodology that builds on the diverse practices observed across the five countries and offers a structured approach that CSOs can adopt to strengthen campaign finance monitoring in various political contexts. 

It is composed of two parts— (a) a modular framework for monitoring, which outlines the core pillars needed for assessing legal compliance, data accessibility, triangulation, digital oversight and accountability; and (b) a step-by-step process for CSO implementation, which provides a practical sequence of actions to guide organizations in operationalizing the framework in real monitoring environments.

Download the full report “Citizen Monitoring of Political and Campaign Finance in Asia.”