Latin American Regulation of Political Parties: Continuing Trends and Breaks with the Past
This paper looks at the development of the legal regulation of political parties in Latin America, with a focus on the content of the legal changes that have occurred over the last decade. Attention is paid in particular to the development of legal norms related to the registration and dissolution of parties, provisions for internal democracy and candidate selection, and the regulation of private funding, public funding, and access to the media. This comparative analysis identifies general trends across the countries' regulation of political parties, as well as differences between the various legal paradigms as they occur. Rather than treating the development of party law in the Latin American region as one static phenomenon, this paper formulates an answer to the question of how contemporary Latin American states regulate political parties through the identification of continuing trends and breaks with past legal paradigms.