Party Regulation as a Self-Legitimizing System

Abstract

The aim of this article is to contribute to a reflection on the endogenous nature of party regulation and on the ways in which law making can be used by political actors to foster a privileged legal environment. The article first provides a review of the literature about party regulation and its main approaches. Secondly, building on a comprehensive database of party regulation in Europe, it draws attention to the presence of functional definitions of political parties in party law and speculates as to why such non-prescriptive statements have been introduced. In the conclusions, it suggests that presenting themselves as ‘eufunctional’ performers, political parties have strengthened their legal status and (self-)legitimized their institutional centrality, ensuring their organizational survival within the system independently from their declining capacity as vehicles of political representation. Further lines of inquiry and cross-fertilization between disciplines are suggested and encouraged.

Keywords

• political parties
• party regulation
• institutional endogeneity
• functionalism
• self-interest
• political representation