Final Report Summary - PARTYDEMOCRACY (Re-conceptualizing party democracy)
The summary should be a stand-alone description of the project and its outcomes. This text should be as concise as possible and suitable for dissemination to non specialist audiences.
The overall aim of this research project is to cast empirical and theoretical light on the state of political parties and modern party democracy. It has investigated the changing conceptions of parties and democracy through a focus on party law, i.e. the nature and intensity of the legal regulation of parties in post-war Europe. The tendency for modern European democracies to make party structures and activities subject to increasingly intensive regulation by law has implied that party organization and behaviour are becoming more and more closely managed by the state. The increased relevance of party law and the corresponding privileged legal status of parties not only implies an explicit acknowledgement of their institutional importance for democracy, it also effectively accord them a (quasi-) official status as part of the democratic state. The nature and intensity of party regulation is therefore important for investigations into the quality of the linkages between parties and the state, which have become progressively stronger in the face of a deterioration of their linkages with society and a weakening of their representative capacity. This research has focused on the question whether this implies that parties have been transformed from agents of society to agents of the state and whether today’s dominant conception of party democracy is one that is based on a notion of parties as public utilities rather than private and voluntary associations. The project also has sought to explore the motivations for the formal legal recognition of political parties and to analyze the different modalities of party regulation in light of the various normative understandings of party democracy.
The project encompasses all democratic states in Europe (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and United Kingdom). Results indicate that there are significant differences in terms of both the nature and intensity of party regulation between established and more recently created democracies, between West-European and East-European democracies, and especially between countries with a continuous democratic history and those with an interrupted democratic experience. The intensity of party regulation furthermore tends to be significantly higher in recently created democracies, which also put more emphasis on prescriptive and prohibitive forms of regulation. In terms of the variation over time we found that the nature of party regulation shifts from a predominance of attention to parliamentary and electoral party activity towards greater intervention in the extra-parliamentary organizational structures and activities of the parties. Finally, on the basis of a content analysis of the national constitutions it appears possible to distinguish at least three different models – Modern Party Government, Defending Democracy, and Public Utilities – each of which reflects a particular understanding of the place of political parties within the democratic system.
Within modern European democracies, moreover, we find different, and often competing, conceptions of party democracy. Political parties generally occupy a somewhat ambiguous space in the political system at the interstices of government and civil society, as few countries have been able to develop a coherent regulatory framework for defining the relationship between the parties, the state and the individual. On the one hand, parties may be identified as private subjects with corresponding democratic rights and freedoms, while many constitutions also attempt to keep them separate from those state institutions which are meant to be neutral and non-partisan (e.g. bureaucracy, judiciary, head of state). In addition, parties are rarely assigned any influence on functions that fall within the domain of government or executive power. At the same time, their position as autonomous agents of society is clearly compromised by a significant amount of state intervention in their external activities and internal organizational structures. Furthermore, as a result of their institutional relevance as key components of the political system, accompanied by a uniquely privileged position in terms of state support, political parties have effectively become incorporated into the public realm. Empirically, the increased regulation of political parties has a clear impact on both party organizations and party systems, in that they are generally conducive to the centralization of political parties and frequently serve to exclude new and challenger parties from the system, and thus contribute to the cartelization of party politics, except where public funding provisions serve to support extra-parliamentary parties that fail to meet the electoral threshold.
* Please, notice that this summary may be published
The overall aim of this research project is to cast empirical and theoretical light on the state of political parties and modern party democracy. It has investigated the changing conceptions of parties and democracy through a focus on party law, i.e. the nature and intensity of the legal regulation of parties in post-war Europe. The tendency for modern European democracies to make party structures and activities subject to increasingly intensive regulation by law has implied that party organization and behaviour are becoming more and more closely managed by the state. The increased relevance of party law and the corresponding privileged legal status of parties not only implies an explicit acknowledgement of their institutional importance for democracy, it also effectively accord them a (quasi-) official status as part of the democratic state. The nature and intensity of party regulation is therefore important for investigations into the quality of the linkages between parties and the state, which have become progressively stronger in the face of a deterioration of their linkages with society and a weakening of their representative capacity. This research has focused on the question whether this implies that parties have been transformed from agents of society to agents of the state and whether today’s dominant conception of party democracy is one that is based on a notion of parties as public utilities rather than private and voluntary associations. The project also has sought to explore the motivations for the formal legal recognition of political parties and to analyze the different modalities of party regulation in light of the various normative understandings of party democracy.
The project encompasses all democratic states in Europe (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and United Kingdom). Results indicate that there are significant differences in terms of both the nature and intensity of party regulation between established and more recently created democracies, between West-European and East-European democracies, and especially between countries with a continuous democratic history and those with an interrupted democratic experience. The intensity of party regulation furthermore tends to be significantly higher in recently created democracies, which also put more emphasis on prescriptive and prohibitive forms of regulation. In terms of the variation over time we found that the nature of party regulation shifts from a predominance of attention to parliamentary and electoral party activity towards greater intervention in the extra-parliamentary organizational structures and activities of the parties. Finally, on the basis of a content analysis of the national constitutions it appears possible to distinguish at least three different models – Modern Party Government, Defending Democracy, and Public Utilities – each of which reflects a particular understanding of the place of political parties within the democratic system.
Within modern European democracies, moreover, we find different, and often competing, conceptions of party democracy. Political parties generally occupy a somewhat ambiguous space in the political system at the interstices of government and civil society, as few countries have been able to develop a coherent regulatory framework for defining the relationship between the parties, the state and the individual. On the one hand, parties may be identified as private subjects with corresponding democratic rights and freedoms, while many constitutions also attempt to keep them separate from those state institutions which are meant to be neutral and non-partisan (e.g. bureaucracy, judiciary, head of state). In addition, parties are rarely assigned any influence on functions that fall within the domain of government or executive power. At the same time, their position as autonomous agents of society is clearly compromised by a significant amount of state intervention in their external activities and internal organizational structures. Furthermore, as a result of their institutional relevance as key components of the political system, accompanied by a uniquely privileged position in terms of state support, political parties have effectively become incorporated into the public realm. Empirically, the increased regulation of political parties has a clear impact on both party organizations and party systems, in that they are generally conducive to the centralization of political parties and frequently serve to exclude new and challenger parties from the system, and thus contribute to the cartelization of party politics, except where public funding provisions serve to support extra-parliamentary parties that fail to meet the electoral threshold.
* Please, notice that this summary may be published