Limits of regulation: party law and finance in Slovakia 1990–2012

^†All authors have contributed equally and the ordering of the names simply follows the alphabetical order.

Abstract

This article, a detailed analysis of the content of the legislation on political parties in postcommunist Slovakia, constitutes one part of a broad-based attempt to discover the extent to which changes in the patterns of party regulation have affected party system formation and development. In Slovakia the answer is “not much”, but the process by which this answer emerges can help explain broader patterns. Party organisational and finance regulation in Slovakia made its impact felt only in relatively minor ways at the margins of political conflict, but the rules proved in some contexts to be more than simply party-created reifications of existing practice.

Keywords:

• Slovakia
• political parties
• elections
• post-communism

Notes on contributors

Fernando Casal Bértoa is a Nottingham Research Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations. He is also co-director of the Centre for Comparative and Political Research (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ccpr/index.aspx) at the University of Nottingham. His work has been published in Party Politics, Government and Opposition, International Political Science Review, South European Society and Politics, and East European Politics.

Kevin Deegan-Krause is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Wayne State University, Detroit and co-editor of the European Journal of Political Research Political Data Yearbook responsible for data development. He is the author of Elected Affinities (Stanford 2006) and co-editor (with Zsolt Enyedi) of The Structure of Political Competition in Western Europe (Routledge 2010) and writes online at http://pozorblog.com.

Peter Učeň studied political science in Bratislava, Budapest and Florence. He specializes in the party theory and populism. He has been working in the area of democracy assistance – focusing on enhancing party-building capacities of political parties – as the Senior Program Officer at the Europe Programme of the International Republican Institute (IRI).

Notes

^† All authors have contributed equally and the ordering of the names simply follows the alphabetical order.

1. Avnon (1995), van Biezen and Borz (2012), Janda (2005) and Karvonen (2007) constitute the only exceptions.

2. Actually, the 1993 law was just a very short amendment that adapted existing Czechoslovak Party Law 424 from 1991 for the purposes of political competition in the new country. It eliminated references to Czechoslovakia and its political institutions and introduced the new Slovak ones into the law where necessary. It specified that “the seat of the party shall be on the territory of the Slovak republic” and excluded the possibility for the parties registered in the Czech Republic to operate on the territory of Slovakia by cancelling a mutual acceptance of registration between the two republics of the Czechoslovak federation guaranteed by Article 10 of 424/1991. Note, that Slovakia upon independence adopted the legal body of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic in its entirety and made similar “nostrification” amendments only in case of crucial norms pertaining to the state sovereignty and execution of sovereign power.

3. In an unusual sequence of events, Slovakia's lex suprema began operating three months before the formal independence of Slovakia (Stein 1997, 47), having been adopted on 1 September 1992 and taking effect one month later (Cibulka 1995, 102).

4. Although in historical terms the 1992 Basic Law represents the countrýs second “democratic” constitution, its predecessor, the 1920 Czechoslovak Constitution (effective from February 1920 to March 1939) contained no reference to “political parties”, “political factions” or “parliamentary groups” in any of its 134 articles.

5. These are: “rights and freedoms”, “extra-parliamentary party” and “judicial oversight”. For an in-depth explanation of these and other politico-legal categories, see www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl.

6. This is entirely consistent with the expiration of his/her mandate as parliamentarian and/or Minister (Article 137.2).

7. Adopted by the Supreme Court.

8. The RoP is a “public list”, published on the Ministry's website, “accessible to everybody” (Articles 5.1 and 5.5).

9. Common to both laws, the party's seat cannot be situated outside the territory of the Slovak Republic.

10. In this case, and as in the previous law (Article 9.1), the Ministry has seven days to notify the Statistical Office of the foundation of the party, its name, abbreviations, seat's address and registration date. Reciprocally, the latter has to notify the former within ten days “of the partýs identification number” (Articles 18.1 and 18.2).

11. The 1993 law did not specify the party number.

12. The 1993 law provided for the event of a so-called administrative silence (i.e. no action taken by the Minister). Then, the application was considered to have no deficiencies after the 10^th day (Article 7.3) and the party registered from the 31st day (Article 8.4), from the moment of the reception of the application in both cases.

13. Interestingly enough, and contrary to other European regulations, none of the Slovak Party Laws specified the amount of time given for the removal/correction of the deficiencies.

14. Which, according to the previous law (Article 8.5), had to be done within 60 days from the reception of the decision refusing the registration.

15. In clear contrast to Act 47/1993, which addressed only one article (Article 11) to the issue of changes in a party's seat, statutory body or statutes (Articles 9–12), the 2005 Party Law regulates such matters in great detail.

16. The 1993 law specified, however, some of these rights when stating, on the one hand, that “anyone can freely quit a party” (Article 3.2) and, on the other, that members cannot be restricted “from participating in or supporting [party] activities, or for remaining uninvolved” (Article 3.3).

17. This clearly complements the general prohibition contained in Article 3.2: namely, that “no one can be forced to become a member of a party”.

18. According to Article 8.3, the party has four months to do so from the moment of the creation of the statutory body.

19. Act 47/1993 stipulated such obligation only for the case of dissolution.

20. The sanction for exceeding the limit included deduction of the excess sum from the state contribution to the party.

21. The 1990 law referred to “state public information facilities” and the 1992 referred to “public information facilities” but the application of the law was restricted to state radio and TV broadcasting companies. There were few private radio broadcasters in Slovakia before 1994 and there were no private television broadcasters before 1996.

22. Purposes for which state contributions may not be used include loans and credits to other physical and legal persons, agreements involving silent partnerships, business activities of companies established or participated in by the party, liabilities of other physical or legal persons, gifts or payments of fines and other financial sanctions.

23. Slovakia was accepted into the Eurozone in July 2008 and financial amounts for all subsequent party related legislation, including 568/2008, are denominated only in EUR.

24. The People's Party Our Slovakia (Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko) took its registration on 22 February 2010 from the People's Party for Social Solidarity (Ľudová strana sociálnej solidarity), which was registered until 18 May 2009 as the Party of the Friends of Wine (Strana priateľov vína). Four of the five members of the preparatory committee of the dissolved SP-NS were among candidates in top 20 positions on the electoral list of the People's Party Our Slovakia. Ordinary People (Obyčajní ľudia) took its registration on 28 October 2011 from the Slovak National coalition-Slovak Mutuality (Slovenská národná koalícia – Slovenská vzájomnosť), which was registered until 16 February 2006 as the Real Slovak National Party. The name change of the Slovak National Coalition-Slovak Mutuality into Ordinary People took place only hours before the pre-announced registration of another party using the name Ordinary People and appears to have simply been an attempt to create difficulties for the other party (which later registered itself as Ordinary People and Independent Persons). The Party of Free Speech of Nora Mojsejova (Strana Slobodné Slovo- Nory Mojsejovej) took its registration on 6 December 2011 from the Allicance of the New Citizen (Aliancia nového občana). The Greens (Zeleni) took its registration on 26 February 2012 from the Alliance for a Europe of Nations (Aliancia za Európu národov).