APCP Panel on Party Regulation in Southern Europe: Portugal in Comparative Perspective (Lisbon, 1-3 March 2012)

Chair: Ingrid van Biezen (Leiden University)
Discussants: Carlos Jalali (University of Aveiro) and Marina Costa Lobo (ICS, Lisbon)

This panel seeks to cast empirical and theoretical light on the state of party regulation and its (non-)effects on party system development in post-authoritarian Southern Europe. In particular, all papers begin with an examination of the rules and regulations governing political parties (either in the Constitution or in the party/electoral law), seeking to explore what have been the motivations behind the formal legal recognition of political parties, trying to analyze the different modalities of party regulation in light of the various normative understandings of party democracy. In a similar vein, the papers study the historical evaluation of party funding legislation, distinguishing between the different types of sources, its salience (for political parties) and its limits. Finally, all the papers conclude with an assessment of the extent to which the different regulatory frameworks have affected (or not) the process of party system development. All in all, it is the tendency for Southern European democracies to make party structures and activities subject to increasingly intensive regulation by law, implying a closer management of partisan organizations and behavior by the state, with its (positive or negative) consequences for the party system as a whole, that becomes the object of this panel´s study.

Papers

Luís de Sousa and Fábio Soares - New Trends in Political Financing Regulation: the Role of Political Financing Supervisory Bodies (PFSBs)
Fernando Casal Bértoa, Juan Rodríguez Teruel, Oscar Barberá Aresté and Astrid Barrio López - Uneasiness with the Status Quo. Party Regulation and Party Finance in post-Francoist Spain (1976-2011)
Maria Chiara Pacini and Daniela Romée Piccio - Party Regulation in Italy and its Effects
Xristoforos Vernardakis - From Mass Parties to Party Cartels of Power: The Evolution of the Structure of Political Parties in Greece through Changes in their Statutes and Systems of Financing
Omer Faruk Genckaya - Stateness of Political Parties: the Impact of Political Funding on Party Organization in Turkey