While the Swedish Riksdag parties receive between 60 and 80 per cent of their income via tax funds, the German Riksdag parties receive around a third of the revenues from the state. While the membership fees of the Swedish parties have shrunk for a long time to today, on average, 2.1 percent of the parliamentary parties' revenues, the German parties are considerably higher.

The Christian Democratic Party CDU receives a quarter of its income from membership fees. The Socialist Party, the Social Democratic Party, receives almost a third.

German party support linked to membership

One contributing reason why German parties compared to Sweden have a high proportion of their income from members is that the party support law means that party support is partly linked to how many members the parties have.

-It works very well in several countries. The party support is linked not only to the election result, but also to the number of members. So that the parties are given incentives to obtain a large party membership, says state scientist Ann-Kristin Kölln.

In Germany, total state party support was increased from about SEK 1.6 billion to about 1.9 billion between 2017 and 2018. Despite the increase, the German party support per capita is considerably lower than the Swedish one, which amounts to around SEK 1.2 billion. Germany has a population that is just over eight times that of Sweden