The Diminishing Importance of Party Regulation in Hungary? When and How Do Institutions Matter?

Authors: Gabriella Ilonszki & R?ka V?rnagy | Published in: working paper series on the legal regulation of political parties, no. 24, May. | Date of publication: 2012

The cartel party argument (Katz-Mair, 1995) points out the fact that parties can also be obstacles hindering the proper functioning of democratic processes. The widespread mistrust of political parties in European countries also underlines that parties are associated with corrupt processes and non-transparent decision-making practices. As a result party regulation is a debated phenomenon: there is a growing demand for party regulation to ensure transparency and to fight corrupt processes while regulation in itself can serve as a tool for cartelization. The situation is even more blurred in EastCentral European countries where regulation does not reflect the public demand but rather the elite-consensus born at the time of regime-change and thus the roles of regulators and regulated actors are often blurred.

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