CES Panel on Party Regulation in Post-communist Europe (Boston, 22-24 March 2012)

Chair: Conor O'Dwyer (University of Florida)
Discussant: Markus Kreuzer (Villanova University)

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-communist East Central Europe. Contrary to previous works which exclusively focus on the relationship between party funding and party system consolidation (e.g. Birnir, 2005; Smilov and Toplak, 2007; etc.), this panel focuses more on the way political parties have been regulated in general since the (re-)inauguration of democracy in 1989. 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 East Central 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

Timothy Haughton - A Law Unto Themselves: Money, Regulation and the Development of Party Politics in the Czech Republic
Gabriella Ilonszki and Réka Várgany - The Diminishing Importance of Party Regulation in Hungary. When and how do institutions matter?
Marina Popescu and Sorina Soare - Party regulation in Romania: Engineering the Party System between Self-interest and State Capture
Ekaterina Rashkova and Maria Spirova - Party Regulation in Post-communist Bulgaria
Fernando Casal Bértoa and Marcin Walecki - Party Regulation and its Effects on the Polish Party System (1991-2011)
Fernando Casal Bértoa, Kevin Deegan-Krause and Peter Ucen - The limits of regulation: Party Law and Finance in Slovakia (1990-2012)