Party Law

What is Party Law?

Party law can be understood as legislation specifically designed to regulate the life of party organizations. Alternatively party law can be defined as the total body of law that affects political parties. In the former case party law is a clearly defined body of law that may exist or not in specific countries. In the latter case some parts of the legal order, such as family law, are likely to be irrelevant to the organization and activities of political parties (except, of course, policy-making), but a vast territory remains. In this contribution we try to steer a middle way between these two extremes. In the theoretical sections of this chapter we address issues of party law in a more general sense. In the empirical sections we focus on the legal regulation of extra-parliamentary party organizations, parties as electoral organizations, and parliamentary parties.

Party law can be derived from the main constitutional texts and other constitutional law (where such a category exists), special party laws, those laws and regulations that govern elections (electoral laws, campaign regulation), parliamentary organization, political finance, other political activities (e.g. organizing demonstrations), and/or laws that regulate the activities of voluntary organizations in a more general sense. Party law also can be found beyond the confines of the nation state. European Union treaties have already explicitly recognized the important role of political parties. More detailed legislation (Regulation (EC) No. 2004/2003) was enacted in 2003 (with the generous rules on party finance coming into force only after the 2004 European elections).

However defined, party law is the domain of academic lawyers. Political scientists, while interested in the substance of party regulation in some selected fields, in particular with regard to elections and party finance, have not devoted much attention to party law as such. Geographically, Germany is the heartland of party law. As we show in the empirical sections of this chapter, there is no democratic country in which political parties are subjected to more detailed explicit regulation. This fact has triggered a wealth of academic publications, many of which originate from a research institute for the study of party law (now located at the University of Düsseldorf). While most of these publications are ‘hard core’ law studies and delve into details of German party law, an increasing part is devoted to comparative themes, mostly with a focus on Western Europe. Likewise, this chapter mainly relates to party law in European countries (for the United States, see the chapter by Lowenstein). It aims to map the universe of types of party regulation rather than provide full coverage of individual cases.

In this chapter we are mainly concerned with the formal and de facto recognition of [Page 436]political parties through the legal order. A formal recognition - or ‘authorization’ (Pedersen, 1982) - means that a political party assumes a legally defined role in the political system and is formally recognized by the state. It is relevant to the extent that only a party (in the formal sense) enjoys specific freedoms and/or can perform specific functions and/or have access to resources of some kind. A de facto recognition provides the same benefits as official recognition but without requiring the party to go through an authorization process. However, the party will have to fulfil specific criteria in order to win the benefits that result from de facto party status.

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