Adopting Party Law

POLITICAL PARTIES AND
DEMOCRACY IN THEORETICAL
AND PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVES
ADOPTING PARTY LAW
K ENNETH J ANDA
N ATIONAL D EMOCRATIC I NSTITUTE
FOR
I NTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
POLITICAL PARTIES AND

DEMOCRACY IN THEORETICAL
AND PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVES
ADOPTING PARTY LAW
K ENNETH J ANDA
N ATIONAL D EMOCRATIC I NSTITUTE
FOR
I NTERNATIONAL A FFAIRS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
ADOPTING PARTY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
WHAT IS PARTY LAW? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Electoral, Campaign, and Political Finance Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Relationships among the Four Bodies of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Constitutions as a Source of Party Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
A WORLDWIDE SURVEY OF PARTY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

PARTY LAW AND PARTY POLITICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
MODELS OF REGULATION AND EXAMPLES OF PARTY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
The Proscription Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
The Permission Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
The Promotion Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
The Protection Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
The Prescription Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND KEY ISSUES IN PARTY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Civil Prerequisites: Is the Country Ready for Party Law? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
The Level of the Law: Starting at the Top? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Type of Party: To Aggregate or Articulate Interests? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Parties and Presidents: Are They Incompatible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Type of Government: Parliamentary or Presidential? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Political Parties and Democracy: Inter or Intra? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
APPENDIX: DATABASE OF PARTY LAWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY IN THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVES

Adopting Party Law
Dr. Kenneth Janda, Northwestern University
Political Finance Policy, Parties, and Democratic Development
Dr. Michael Johnston, Colgate University
Developments in Party Communications
Dr. Pippa Norris, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Implementing Intra-Party Democracy
Dr. Susan Scarrow, University of Houston
Project Manager: Victoria Canavor

Project Support: Hannah Arnold
Consultant: Dr. Denise Baer
Editor: Dr. John Gould
Design and Layout: Stephanie Levy
NDI would like to thank those who kindly served as informal advisors to the Political Parties and Democracy in Theoretical and
Practical Perspectives series: Dr. Russell Dalton, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of
California, Irvine; Dr. David Farrell, Jean Monnet Chair in European Politics at the University of Manchester; Dr. Michael
Gallagher, Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College, Dublin; Dr. Kay Lawson, Professor Emerita at San
Francisco State University; and Dr. Paul Webb, Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex, Brighton.
Additional contributions to the series were made by Scott Bates, Center for National Policy; John Bruton, Fine Gael, Ireland;
Dr. Dieter Dettke, Friedrich Ebert Foundation; Matyas Ersi MP, Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), Hungary; Thomas
Melia, Freedom House; Annemie Neyts MEP, Flemish Liberal Party (VLD), Belgium; Dr. Norbert Wagner, Konrad Adenauer
Foundation; and Tony Worthington, Labour Party, United Kingdom.
For more information on NDIs political party programs or to obtain electronic copies of the Political Parties and Democracy
in Theoretical and Practical Perspectives series, please visit http://www.ndi.org/globalp/polparties/polparties.asp.
PREFACE
A democracy needs strong and sustainable political parties
with the capacity to represent citizens and provide policy
choices that demonstrate their ability to govern for the public
good. With an increasing disconnect between citizens and
their elected leaders, a decline in political activism, and a
growing sophistication of anti-democratic forces, democratic
political parties are continually challenged.
For more than 20 years, the National Democratic Institute
(NDI) has worked with political parties around the world
to create more open political environments in which citizens
can actively participate in the democratic process. As a
political party institute, NDI approaches its work from a
practical viewpoint, offering assistance to promote parties
long-term organizational development, enhance their
competitiveness in local and national elections, and help
them participate constructively in government. This support
takes many forms, from interactive training and guided
practice to consultations and tailored resources that help
parties become more open and representative organizations.
In 2004, NDI began producing a series of research papers
that examine four topics central to the role and function of
political parties. Two of the papers, Adopting Party Law
and Political Finance Policy, Parties, and Democratic
Development, discuss regulatory mechanisms that directly
impact parties, while the other two, Implementing IntraParty Democracy and Developments in Party
Communications, relate to parties internal governance and
organization. Together, these papers aim to provide
comparative information on elements of party politics and
to shed light on different methods and their associated
causes and effects. They also examine some of the
implications of a political partys action or strategy in each
area.
These papers do not offer theories on party organization
or instant solutions for addressing the issues explored. Rather,
they consider obstacles to, and possible approaches for,
creating more effective and inclusive political parties. They
flag potential pitfalls and bumps along the way, and illustrate
Adopting Party Law
the practical considerations of which parties may need to be

aware. The papers also encourage greater exploration of the
many excellent resources, articles, and books cited by the
authors.
It is hoped that the Political Parties and Democracy in
Theoretical and Practical Perspectives series will help readers
gain a better understanding of each topic and, in particular,
the complexities of the issues addressed. This paper,
Adopting Party Law, provides cautions leaders should heed
and outlines a number of questions to consider in devising
party law.
The series is an experiment in blending theoretical
knowledge, empirical research, and practical experience.
NDI invited four eminent scholars to write the papers and
engaged a range of peopleincluding party leaders,
democracy practitioners, NDI staff members, and other
noted academicsin every stage of the process, from
developing the initial terms of reference to reviewing outlines
and drafts. NDI is indebted to a large number of people
who helped bring this series to fruition, particularly the
authors who took part in a cumbersome, collaborative
process and graciously accepted feedback and guidance, and
the projects consultant, Dr. Denise Baer. Special appreciation
is due to NDI Senior Program Officer Victoria Canavor,
who managed the project from its inception.
NDI gratefully acknowledges the support of the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), which
provided funding for this project.
Kenneth Wollack
President
Ivan Doherty
Senior Associate,
Director of Political
Party Programs
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Janda is the Payson S. Wild Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University. He has been co-editor of the international
journal Party Politics since 1995, and in 2000 he won the Samuel J. Eldersveld Career Achievement Award from the American
Political Science Association (APSA) for his research on political parties. In 2005, he was co-winner of the Best Instructional
Software Award from the APSA, an award he also received in 1992. Dr. Jandas books include Political Parties: A Cross National
Survey (1980) and, with co-author Robert Harmel, Parties and Their Environments: Limits to Reform? (1982). His co-authored
American government textbook, The Challenge of Democracy, is used in hundreds of colleges across the nation and has been
translated into Czech, Georgian, Hungarian, Korean, and Russian. Dr. Janda received his Ph.D. from Indiana University.
Political Parties and Democracy in Theoretical and Practical Perspectives
ADOPTING PARTY LAW

Emerging democracies face a quandary in devising party
law: deciding how much governmental authority should
be used in regulating parties while parties themselves are
meanwhile expected to provide the agendas for citizens to
choose among in determining their government. If
governments have no laws stating what parties can and
cannot do, nations risk ruthless politics with little or no
public accountability. Yet if governments enact strict laws
specifying how parties should organize, campaign, and
operate, nations can discourage or prevent political parties
from participating in public affairs.
That quandary recalls the predicament from the fairy
tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears: How much
regulation of political parties is just right for a society?
While practitioners may wish to create opportunities for
just the right kind of party, the moral may be that
democracy is not always served when nations enact party
law.
This paper provides several cautions that party leaders
should heed and outlines a number of questions that they
should consider in devising party law. To this end, the
paper reviews five models that reflect different ways in
which states have regulated parties: policies that either
proscribe, permit, promote, protect, or prescribe parties and
party activities. Party leaders in emerging democracies
might wish to consider how older democracies have
followed different trajectories in adopting party law, and
consider to what extent local factors might condition
which model of party regulation best fits their needs. For
example, too much party law may have a chilling effect
on the formation and development of political parties, as
well as deterring the creation of political parties. On the
other hand, when enacting too little party law,
governments may result in a surfeit of minor parties
producing chaotic government. These points are illustrated
through a systematic review of party laws covering 169
polities as well as an analysis of experiences in established
democracies.
Adopting Party Law
WHAT IS PARTY LAW?

The term party law has different meanings to different
people, even among party scholars. The term is sometimes
used in reference to internal rules, such as party charters or
bylaws by which parties govern themselves. Party law also
refers to the body of state law concerning what parties must
and must not dowhat is legal and illegal in party politics:
Generally, this includes law concerning what constitutes a
political party, the form of activity in which parties may
engage, and what forms of party organization and behavior
are appropriate.
Addressing the distinction between internal party rules
and external state regulation of parties, Richard Katz cited
three objectives of state law concerning political parties:
1. To determine what constitutes a political party. This
determination often spawns additional party laws: who
qualifies for ballot access, who benefits from public
resources (such as subsidies or broadcast media), who
participates in the government and how, and so on.
2. To regulate the form of activity in which parties may engage.
This umbrella heading covers the raising and spending
of funds, campaign activities, issue stands in party
platforms or manifestos, and more.
3. To ensure appropriate forms of party organization and
behavior. Katz held this to be the most controversial
objective, because it intruded into internal issues of party
leadership and social relationships. Laws could require
parties to elect officers by party members, but a party
might prefer to choose them through a party congress.
Laws might also demand gender or ethnic equality, or
laws might require maintaining party organizations in
various national regions. One can imagine other policy
goals that nations seek to implement through party law.1
Following Katz, this paper defines party lawthe
common nounas the body of state-based regulations that
determines the legal status of political parties and that often

specify what constitutes party membership, how parties must
be organized, how they should campaign, how they must
handle party funds, and so on. Party Lawthe proper
nounrefers to statutes regulating political parties and
codified under a comparably descriptive title: for example,
Germanys Law on Political Parties or South Koreas
Political Parties Act.2
In this paper, when the term Party Law is written with
capitals, it refers to specific Party Law statutes. The term
party law in lower case refers to a body of party law. Party
law for any nation derives from its Party Law (if it has
one) and from legislative statutes, administrative rulings,
court decisions, or even national constitutions. Laws
governing the definition, composition, structure, and
activities of political parties lie at the core of party law,
which focuses on political parties as organizations. The
boundaries of party law can be illuminated by considering
three related bodies of law: electoral law, campaign law, and
political finance law.
According to Shaheen Mozaffar and Andreas Schedler,

electoral law (which they term electoral governance)
consists of
the wider set of activities that creates and maintains
the broad institutional framework in which voting and
electoral competition take place. It involves the
design of institutions that define the basic framework
of democratic elections. Traditional electoral rules
covering suffrage rights, rules of representation,
assembly size, district magnitude, district boundaries,
and electoral calendars form part of the agenda.4
Following the convention set forth above for Party Law
and party law, Electoral Law is used for national statutes
regulating elections, even though the actual nomenclature
varies from country to country.5 And electoral law is used
for a nations body of electoral law. This body of law derives
from Electoral Law (if it exists) and from legislative statutes,
administrative rulings, court decisions, and national
constitutions.
Electoral law is often quite comprehensive. Within
electoral law, Mozaffar and Schedler include the formal rules
Electoral, Campaign, and

Political Finance Laws
that govern voter, party, and candidate eligibility and

registration; laws and regulations that affect the resource
In addition to a Party Law, some nationssuch as South

Koreahave enacted distinct laws governing elections,
campaigns, and political finance. Each overlaps with party
law but focuses on something distinctive at its core.
Electoral law. National elections are dynamic events in
which millions of citizens typically cast ballots for hundreds
of candidates and scores of parties. Thousands of
government officials then tally these ballots. This complex
process requires minute rules to guide the behavior of all
the political actors. The core focus of electoral law is the
framework and administration of these elections. Such law
in the United Kingdom, according to a 2003 government
study,
and media).6
endowments of parties and candidates (their access to money
developed in a piecemeal fashion over many years, and

is to be found in no fewer than 36 separate pieces of
legislation dating back to the Parliamentary Elections
Act 1695. Although the Representation of the People
Act 1983 was a consolidation Act, there are no less
than 19 extant new Acts and 63 pieces of subsidiary
legislation affecting electoral law since that time.3
Whereas national Election Laws often specify how political

parties should operate, Party Laws seldom specify how elections
should operate. Nations are more likely to have a titled
Election Law than a Party Law, but if they have both, their
Electoral Laws tend to be longer, reflecting regulation of both
elections and parties. For instance, the English version of the
South Korean Election Law is about 200 pages versus about
70 pages for its Party Law. Similarly, the German Electoral
Law is considerably longer than the German Party Law.
Campaign law. Electoral law contains detailed procedures
for running elections. Election administration is an
important topic, but it is of limited concern to those
interested in party politics, who tend to focus on the subset
of electoral regulations that pertain to election campaigns.
Although campaign regulations are largely subsumed under
Electoral Laws, they also issue from other sources and
constitute a relatively distinct body of campaign law.
Moreover, some nations enact titled Campaign Laws:
Consider the 1971 U.S. Federal Election Campaign Act and

its Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
Campaign law can specify the duration of election
campaigns, what activities are permissible, whether poll
results can be published prior to the vote, and other aspects
of election campaigns.7 Like the two U.S. Campaign Laws,
campaign law can also regulate political parties, specifying
how candidates or parties can raise and spend funds, how
finance committees must be organized, and so on. To the
extent that campaign law deals with political parties, it
becomes a source of party law.
Political finance law. Karl-Heinz Nassmacher uses the
term political finance to encompass both party finance
and campaign finance.8 Both topics are relevant to party
law. However, some groupslike Transparency
Internationalare concerned more broadly with the role of
money in buying favors in public policy and in defrauding
the government so as to obtain services and material. They
focus on money as a lubricant for political corruption.9
Political finance in its narrower senselimited to party and
campaign financeis included in party law.
The body of political finance law can issue from many
sources, sometimes from a specific Political Finance Law.
South Korea, for instance, has a Political Fund Act that
encompasses political parties, candidates, and political
associations. To the extent that political finance law deals
with political parties, it becomes a source of party law.
FIGURE 1: SELECTED MODELS OF PARTY

ORGANIZATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL TENDENCIES
campaign
law
political
finance law
electoral law
party
law
while nominally and legally subsumed under it.10 The larger

circle, political finance law, represents the body of law
concerned with raising and spending money in politics, which
is of general interest to many political observers. Because
political finance law applies to politics outside of parties and
campaigns, it is presumed to be a somewhat larger body.
Constitutions as a Source of Party Law

As defined above, party law consists of state-based
regulations concerning the definition, composition,
structure, and activities of political parties as organizations.
Relationships among the Four Bodies of Law

Figure 1 sketches the hypothetical relationships among
these four bodies of law. The heavy black circle in Figure 1
represents the body of party lawall state regulations of
political parties, regardless of source. The overlapping area
between the circles for electoral law and party law in Figure
1 indicates that some portion of state regulations of political
parties originates in state regulations of elections. Although
a nations electoral laws can also affect the number and type
of parties that can exist and that prosper, such indirect effects
are regarded as being on the periphery and not at the core of
party law as defined here.
The small circle labeled campaign law refers to a body of
regulations that is often treated separately from electoral law
Adopting Party Law
This body of law can be distinguished from related bodies

of electoral, campaign, and political finance law, which
overlap with party law and often serve as sources of party
law. Again, other sources of party law include legislative
statutes, administrative rulings, court decisions, and national
constitutions. Of these, national constitutions deserve special
discussion.
Few writers treat constitutions as sources of party law.
Upon noting the key role that parties play in parliamentary
democracies, the British constitutional scholar, Eric Barendt,
writes:
One might, therefore, expect constitutions to lay down
some framework rules for political parties, at least to
prevent them from adopting totalitarian policies and
to safeguard the rights of individual members. But
constitutions rarely say much about parties, while

some have totally ignored their existence. The United
States Constitution has never taken any notice of
them, an attitude which is shared by the uncodified
arrangements in the United Kingdom.11
Nevertheless, Barendt explains that courts make
constitutional law through rulings on political parties under
other constitutional provisions. That is certainly true in the
United Statesand even in Britain, which has a fundamental
law if not a single constitutional text.12
Barendt was wrong, moreover, in contending that national
constitutions rarely say much about political parties. A 1976
survey of 142 constitutions found that at least two-thirds
mentioned parties.13 As Jorge Laguardia pointed out in an essay
on the constitutional framework for parties in Central America,
Recognition of political parties first began with the Guatemalan
Constitution of 1945. From then on all countries in the region
recognized political parties in their constitutions.14
Incorporating party law into constitutions may be a
consequence of the latest wave of democratization in
developing states. As Thomas Carothers writes:
The democracy wave of the 1980s and 1990s has
included a good deal of rewriting old constitutions in
transitional countries and writing new ones for new
states. Getting certain provisions included in the
documentand other provisions taken outbecomes
a natural focus of attention.15
Regardless of when the trend began, constitutions must
now be considered a source of party law, since many often
say a great deal about political parties.
A WORLDWIDE SURVEY OF PARTY LAW

There are not many systematic cross-national surveys of
party law. Individual chapters in the massive handbook by
Richard Katz and Peter Mair on party organizations reported
party laws for 12 countries.16 However, that volume did not
compare party laws across nations. Other scholars have
compared party laws on selected topics. For example, Fritz
Plasser and Gunda Plasser cataloged and analyzed the
regulatory framework of election campaigns in some 70
countries. 17 Michael Pinto-Duschinsky compiled and
analyzed government regulations for party finance and extent
of government subsidies in 104 countries. 18 PintoDuschinskys compilation was later used in USAIDs
expanded report on money in politics in 118 nations.19
The most recent and most comprehensive cross-national
study of political finance was sponsored by the International
Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).20
International IDEAs database on political finance laws
and regulations in 111 countries is perhaps the largest
collection of such information assembled to date. Even more
recently, Transparency International, an international, nongovernmental anti-corruption organization, included
questions of party finance in its 2004 report on worldwide
corruption.21
It is helpful here to define terms for assessing the scholarly
literature on party law. Let us use the term origin for the
source of the regulationswhether they were promulgated
in the constitution, in court law, in a legislative statute, in
an executive order, or in an administrative rule. Let us call
the objective of the legislationfor example, the definition
of party, party activities, or party organizationthe legislative
target. Accordingly, Plasser and Plasser inventoried party law
that had campaign practices as the regulatory target. In
contrast, the compilations of party laws conducted by PintoDuschinsky, USAID, and International IDEA all targeted
party finance. Party finance was also the main target of
Transparency International, but it also inventoried laws
dealing with corrupt political practices. In fact, more crossnational inventories of party law have focused on party
finance than on any other topic. For this study, a database
was created containing 1,101 laws, identified by
governmental origin and intended target. To understand how
the party law examples for the database were obtained, see
the Appendix on pages 25-28.
PARTY LAW AND PARTY POLITICS

Without doubt, a nations party law affects its political
parties. The question is: Which laws have what effects?
Scholars who study political parties tend to be dubious about
the success of engineering party politics through legislation,
especially in developing countries with unsettled political
traditions. Whereas laws requiring parties to maintain lists
of members might aid party organization in advanced
democracies, similar laws are likely to curtail party

competition in new democracies, where authorities might
easily access lists of their opponents.
Even in advanced democracies with stable party systems,
how party law operates can be controversial. As documented
by law professors Samuel Issacharoff and Richard Pildes,
the United States Supreme Court tends to rule against
minor parties in favor of both major parties.22 Describing
the lockup of the American party system by the
Democratic and Republican parties with Court support,
they argue that
when two-party dominance is enforced through state
restrictions that have as their purpose and effect a
guarantee of two-party domination, a two-party
market may be insufficiently open to guarantee
appropriate access to groups seeking to challenge the
status quo.23
Gregory Magarian, another law professor, ascribed the
Courts rulings to its normative belief
that a stable two-party political system is essential to
our democratic institutions, and that the best way to
achieve the myriad benefits the major political parties
provide is to maximize their autonomy. In contrast,
governmental interests in political stability have
outweighed minor parties expressive interests.24
Party law is not only controversial concerning its intended
effects; it also carries unintended consequenceseven when
experienced political actors work in a multipartisan manner
to craft party law. For example, the U.S. 2002 Bipartisan
Campaign Financing Reform Act was supposed to curb the
flow of so-called soft money to political parties from special
interests during national campaigns. Indeed, the Acts first
title reads REDUCTION OF SPECIAL INTEREST
INFLUENCE. Nevertheless, the 2004 presidential election
was influenced by an unprecedented flood of money from
non-party groups formed primarily to influence elections
that were tax-exempt under Section 527 of the Internal
Revenue Code. According to one Washington organization
that monitors campaign finance, so-called 527 committees
raised (and largely spent) a total of $434 million in 2004
alone, $60 million more than the amount raised in the
previous three years combined.25 As another legal scholar
Adopting Party Law
wrote, The unique characteristics of political parties pose a

challenge for any institution seeking to regulate them.26
If regulating parties through law is problematic in an
established democracy such as the United States, designing
law to produce desirable parties in transitional countries is
hazardous. Writing about democratic party building abroad,
Carothers says that American practitioners believe that
parties should play three essential roles: (1) aggregating and
articulating the interests of citizens; (2) structuring electoral
competition and shaping the political landscape; and (3)
providing coherent political groups to run the government.27
According to Carothers, not just any kind of party will do:
The parties should be organized around political
ideologies rather than ethnic, religious, or regional
identities. Their ideological differences should be
distinct but not too sharp; extreme ideologies are
dangerous. The parties should not be personalistic
vehicles for the self-aggrandizement of charismatic
leaders but organizations with democratic internal
structures that seek a constituency among citizens and
strive for openness, accountability, and lawful behavior.
They should cultivate relations with other social and
political organizations and be willing to work in
coalitions when circumstances require.28
Unfortunately, parties of this type are not very common
in developing countries. In their cross-national analysis,
Political Parties and Democracy, Richard Gunther and Larry
Diamond identified 15 distinct types of political parties
worldwide, only five of which correspond to the Westernstyle party that Carothers described. According to their
terminology, these were: (1) class-mass, (2) pluralistnationalist, (3) denominational-mass, (4) catch-all, and (5)
programmatic parties. Falling outside Carothers description
are these party types: (6) local notables, (7) clientelistic, (8)
ethnic, (9) congress, (10) personalistic, (11) Leninist, (12)
ultranationalist, (13) religious-fundamentalist, (14) leftlibertarian, and (15) post-industrial extreme-right.29 In many
developing countries, as Carothers has written, The parties
cannot be understood as simply underdeveloped or weak;
they are fundamentally different kinds of organizations than
Western ones.30
Political parties are necessary for democratic government,
and there is a need for legal frameworks to facilitate the
emergence and growth of strong, competitive political parties.
The intention of this paper is to assess party law across nations
and to identify five alternative models that characterize

policies for regulating parties.
The paper contends that nations tend to follow policies
that proscribe, permit, promote, protect, or prescribe parties
and party activities. These policy models are conceptualized
as pure forms; nations may not follow any one of them exactly
in making party law. Nations tend to follow these models,
but specific laws may fit different regulatory policies,
reflecting the complexity of the law-making process. In
general, nations that proscribe parties by law forbid them
from operating entirely; nations that permit parties allow
them to operate freely; nations that promote parties actively
support them; nations that protect parties favor certain ones
over others; and nations that prescribe for parties seek to mold
them to fit an ideal.
Each of these models will be illustrated below in reference
to cross-national examples of party law. The more we know
about the alternative legal frameworks under which parties
operate, the better our understanding will be of how to design
competitive party systems.
MODELS OF REGULATION AND

EXAMPLES OF PARTY LAW
In principle, one should be able to evaluate national party
laws according to whether they facilitate or obstruct party
politics. In their 2002 study of global political
campaigning, Plasser and Plasser evaluated national
campaign laws along comparable lines. They amassed a maze
of specific rules on the regulatory framework of campaigns
from 52 countries. To impose some order on the rules they
collected, Plasser and Plasser classified countries according
to whether campaign practices were strictly regulated,
moderately regulated, or minimally regulated. They cite
Japan as having strictly regulated campaigns, Russia as a
country with moderately regulated campaigns, and say
about minimally regulated campaigns: The most popular
example of minimal restrictions of campaign practices are in
the United States, but campaigns in Australia, New Zealand
and Canada also face only minor restrictions by prevailing
electoral laws.31
In what follows, this paper conceptualizes alternative
models of regulation and cites examples illustrating each of
the five modelsproscribe, permit, promote, protect, or

prescribeoutlined above.
The Proscription Model

To proscribe means to declare illegal or outlaw. However,
the words illegal or outlaw are not used in any of the
159 laws under the heading political parties / legal status. If
nations seek to outlaw all political parties, they tend instead
to do so by denying them legal status. One way to do this is
by not mentioning parties in the constitution, which occurs
in 13 nations in the database:
Grenada
Oman
United Arab Emirates
Ireland
Qatar
United States
Jamaica
Saudi Arabia
Venezuela
Japan
Tonga
Malaysia
Tunisia
But failing to mention political parties in constitutions is

not a certain sign of the proscription model. The 13 countries
above represent a mixed bag of established democracies,
transitional democracies, and authoritarian regimes. The
constitutions of Grenada, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, and the
United Statesall rated as Free in the 2004 Freedom
BOX 1: CONTRASTING CONSTITUTIONAL

PROVISIONS ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Article 39 [Expression] in the Constitution of
Saudi Arabia
Information, publication, and all other media shall
employ courteous language and the states regulations,
and they shall contribute to the education of the nation
and the bolstering of its unity. All acts that foster
sedition or division or harm the states security and its
public relations or detract from mans dignity and rights
shall be prohibited. The statutes shall define all that.
BOX 2: PROHIBITION OF PARTY

TYPESALGERIA
Constitution, Article 42
With respect to the provisions of the present
Constitution, the political parties cannot be founded
on a religious, linguistic, racial, sexual, corporatist or
regional basis.
The political parties cannot resort to partisan
propaganda pertaining to the elements referred to in
the previous paragraph.
All obedience of political parties under whatever form
be it interests or foreign parties is forbidden.
No political party may resort to violence or constraint,
of whatever nature or forms.
House ratings32do not provide for political parties. Neither

do the constitutions of Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the
United Arab Emirates, all of which are rated Not Free.
Even if a national constitution acknowledges political parties,
that does not ensure that parties operate freely. Turkmenistans
constitution (Article 28) guarantees that Citizens have the
right to create political parties and other public associations
that function within the framework of the Constitution and
laws. However, Freedom House rates Turkmenistan as even
less free than the three Arab nations mentioned above.
The constitutions of some established democraciesthe
United States is one examplepredate the origin of parties,
which accounts for their omission in these democracies
constitutions. Nevertheless, strong constitutional provisions
for freedom of expression can authorize parties without
mentioning them. See Box 1, which compares the First
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with Article 39 in the
Saudi Arabian Constitution on freedom of expression. Neither
constitution specifically mentions political parties. However,
parties fall within the protection of free speech, assembly,
and petition under the U.S. First Amendment. The Saudi
document, in contrast, discourages acts that foster division
or disunity, which parties usually do as a matter of course
when they criticize government policy.
Moreover, some nations do outlaw certain types of parties.
A search for forbid under political parties / legal status
Adopting Party Law
identifies six nationsThe Netherlands, Algeria, Ivory

Coast, Poland, Senegal, and Italythat ban parties on various
grounds. The most common prohibitions are those against
social biases, foreign control, and the use of violenceall of
which are exhibited in Article 42 of the Algerian Constitution
(see Box 2).
In a different vein, Article 12 of the Italian constitution
says, It is forbidden to reorganize, under any form whatever,
the dissolved fascist party. Such legal proscriptions aim to
limit certain types of parties or party activity, but they are
not designed to prohibit political parties in general.
The Permission Model

To permit, of course, means to allow. The permission
model of party law allows parties to exist and operate without
BOX 3: PERMISSIVE REGULATION

ANDORRA AND ESTONIA
Andorra Constitution, Article 26
Andorrans have the right freely to create political
parties. Their functioning and organization must be
democratic and their activities lawful. The suspension
of their activities and their dissolution is the
responsibility of the judicial organs.
Estonian Constitution, Article 48
(1) Everyone shall have the right to form nonprofit
associations and leagues. Only Estonian citizens may
be members of political parties.
(2) The establishment of associations and leagues
possessing weapons or organized in a military fashion
or conducting military exercises requires a prior permit,
the issuing of which shall be in accordance with
conditions and procedures determined by law.
(3) Associations, leagues or political parties whose aims
or activities are directed towards the violent change of
the Estonian constitutional system or otherwise violate
a criminal law shall be prohibited.
(4) The termination or suspension of the activities of
an association, a league or a political party, and its
penalization, may only be invoked by a court, in cases
where a law has been violated.
specifying what constitutes party membership, how parties

should organize, how they should select their leaders, and
how they should finance their operations (outside the
prohibitions of criminal law). It is a minimalist model of
regulationat the extreme, a laissez faire model.
Perhaps no nation is completely permissive, but the
minimalist model is visible in the constitution of tiny
Andorra (see Box 3, on the previous page). Even Andorras
permissiveness is limited by requiring internal democracy in
party affairsthat party organization must be democratic.
Several countries fitting the permissive model also guard
against legalizing paramilitary groups. For example, the
Estonian constitution has only one provision pertaining to
political parties, Article 48 on the Right to Associate, but

it sets limits on what they can do (see Box 3).
Even nations that fit the permissive model of party law
in their constitutions may enact more detailed parliamentary
laws regulating parties, which is true of both Andorra and
Estonia, and perhaps Australia also.33
The Promotion Model

To promote is to advance, further, or encourage.
Governments sometimes enact laws that promote not only
the activities of political parties, but also their creation.
Typically, they do so through electoral laws that favor the
BOX 4: LEGISLATING PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
IN THE
CONSTITUTIONNORWAY
Article 59
Each municipality constitutes a separate polling district.
The polls shall be held separately for each polling district. At the polls votes shall be cast directly for representatives to
the Storting, together with their proxies, to represent the entire constituency.
The election of representatives of constituencies is based on proportional representation and the seats are distributed
among the political parties in accordance with the following rules.
The total number of votes cast for each party within each separate constituency is divided by 1.4, 3, 5, 7 and so on until
the number of votes cast is divided as many times as the number of seats that the party in question may expect to obtain.
The party which in accordance with the foregoing obtains the largest quotient is allotted the first seat, while the second
seat is allotted to the party with the second largest quotient, and so on until all the seats are distributed. If several parties
have the same quotient, lots are drawn to decide to which party the seat shall be allotted. List alliances are not permitted.
The seats at large are distributed among the parties taking part in such distribution on the basis of the relation between
the total number of votes cast for the individual parties in the entire Realm in order to achieve the highest possible
degree of proportionality among the parties. The total number of seats in the Storting to be held by each party is
determined by applying the rules concerning the distribution of constituency seats correspondingly to the entire Realm
and to the parties taking part in the distribution of the seats at large. The parties are then allotted so many seats at large
that these, together with the constituency seats already allotted, correspond to the number of seats in the Storting to
which the party in question is entitled in accordance with the foregoing. If according to these rules two or more parties
are equally entitled to a seat, preference shall be given to the party receiving the greatest number of votes or, in the event
of a tie, the one which is chosen by drawing lots. If a party has already through the distribution of constituency seats
obtained a greater number of seats than that to which it is entitled in accordance with the foregoing, a new distribution
of the seats at large shall be carried out exclusively among the other parties, in such a way that no account is taken of the
number of votes cast for and constituency seats obtained by the said party.
No party may be allotted a seat at large unless it has received at least 4 per cent of the total number of votes cast in the
entire Realm.
The seats at large obtained by a party are distributed among that partys lists of candidates for constituency elections so
that the first seat is allotted to the list left with the largest quotient after the constituencys seats are distributed, the
second seat to the list with the second largest quotient, and so on until all the partys seats at large have been distributed.
10
BOX 5: PROMOTING PARTIES
WITH
SUBSIDIESA CONSTITUTIONAL COMMITMENT
Argentina, Article 38
The State shall contribute to the financial support of their activities and educational improvement of their leaders.
Political parties must make public the source and destination of their funds and their economic net worth.
Colombia, Article 109
The state will contribute to the financing of the functioning and holding of election campaigns of parties and political
movements with a legal identity.
The other parties, movements, and significant groups of citizens which run candidates will enjoy this privilege as soon
as they secure the percentage of votes prescribed by the law.
Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Article 54
The State assures the financing of political parties. The law determines the conditions and the modalities of the financing
of political parties.
El Salvador, Article 210
The State recognizes the political debt as a mechanism for financing contending political parties, which seeks to provide
them with their freedom and independence. The secondary law shall regulate that referring to this matter.
Guatemala, Article 17
Political parties will receive funding beginning with the general elections of November 3, 1985, a matter that will be
regulated by the Constitutional Electoral Law.
Malawi, Article 40
(92) The State shall provide funds so as to ensure that, during the life of any Parliament, any political party which has
secured more than one-tenth of the national vote in elections to that Parliament has sufficient funds to continue to
represent its constituency.
creation or continuance of numerous political parties. It

has long been noted that legislative elections based on
proportional representation in multimember districts yield
a larger number of parties than do elections in which seats
are won by simple voting pluralities in single-member
districts. Often, the nature of the electoral system is
specified in legislative statutes, usually in codified bodies
of electoral law. But at least 12 countries make proportional
representation a constitutional requirement.
Some observers argue that proportional representation
does not create multiple parties as much as it preserves various
parties already in existence. According to this argument,
existing parliamentary parties collude to ensure their
proportional shares of parliamentary seats in subsequent
elections by designing and passing electoral laws for
proportional representation.34
Adopting Party Law
Consider the case of Norway, which adopted its original

constitution in 1814, only 25 years after the U.S.
Constitution was ratified. Neither document mentioned
parties. Over time, both constitutions were amended. Still
today, the U.S. Constitution does not mention parties.
Norways does not discuss the legal status of parties, but as
amended in 1995, it details the electoral method of
proportional representation (see Box 4), even specifying
numerical divisors for party votes to yield party seats.
Enshrining the electoral method in the constitution helps
to promote party interests by preserving institutions with
which they are comfortable.
Many citizens may not think of electoral law as relevant
to promoting political parties. A more obvious form of
promotion is to grant parties public subsidies, an
increasingly common practice over time. Searching the
11
party law database for political parties / public subsidies

returns 47 entries. Many originate in legislative statutes,
but about half have constitutional origins. Box 5, on the
previous page, reports constitutional commitments to
party subsidies made by Argentina, Colombia, the
Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), El Salvador, Guatemala,
and Malawi.
Richard Katz and Peter Mair have argued that political
parties in many countries have colluded to extract funds from
the state for their own support, saying:
In short, the state, which is invaded by the parties,
and the rules of which are determined by the parties,
becomes a fount of resources through which these
parties not only help to ensure their own survival,
but through which they can also enhance their
capacity to resist challenges from newly mobilized
alternatives.35
Katz and Mair contend that this dynamic has produced a
new type of party, the cartel party, which lives off state largess.
The Protection Model

To protect is to shield from injury or loss. The most
extreme protection possible for any party is to declare it the
only legitimate one, which Syria has done for the Bath Party
(see Box 6).
Short of declaring a one-party state, some nations protect
certain parties by a judicious dispensation and interpretation
of party law. Consequently, the protection model differs only
in degree from the promotion model. Nations that follow
the protection model go beyond enacting law simply to assist
parties; they build a legal framework to fend off competition
with existing parties. A clear example lies in controlling
candidate and party access to election ballots.
Consider the United States, for instance, where the
administrative responsibility for conducting elections
including elections for president and Congresslies with
state governments. Under state law, most state governments
grant positions on the ballot for the next election to parties
that have won a certain percentage of the vote for a given
office in the previous election. This practice automatically
grants ballot spots to candidates of the established
Democratic and Republican parties. Candidates of minor
12
BOX 6: EXTREME FORM OF PARTY

P ROTECTIONSYRIA
Article 8
The leading party in the society and the state shall be
the Socialist Arab Bath Party. It shall lead a patriotic
and progressive front seeking to unify the resources of
the peoples masses and place them at the service of
the Arab nations goals.
parties typically gain access only by filing petitions containing

thousands of signatures. The disadvantageous ballot situation
confronting the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate,
David Cobb, was described prior to the election in Ballot
Access News:
David Cobb, Green: 54.3% of the voters will see his
name on ballots. He is on in all jurisdictions except
13 places in which the requirements were too difficult
to attempt (Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky,
New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota,
Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, West
Virginia, Wyoming), and eight places in which the
party made a good attempt but fell short (Alabama,
Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Ohio,
Tennessee), and in two places where the party was on
the ballot but something still went wrong.36
An even more blatant exercise of the protection model of
party law can be seen in some developing nations, where
leaders of established parties have structured the legal
framework to increase discipline among their own party
members within parliament. Some countries have adopted
constitutional provisions that cause members of parliament
to lose their seats if they cross the floor and defect to
another party. To illustrate how prevalent the practice is,
numerous examples of such constitutional provisions are
cited in Box 7.
Such legislation gives great power to party leaders. Party
dissidents in the parliamentary delegation cannot leave
the party without losing their seats. Sometimes such laws,
also called anti-hopping provisions, are defended as a
way to increase party discipline and cohesion in
parliament.37 Were such legislation in effect in the United
States, Senator James Jeffords of Vermont could not have
left the Republican Party and become an Independent in
BOX 7: PROTECTING PARTIES WITH CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS

CROSSING THE FLOOR
AGAINST
Belize, Article 59. Tenure of Office of Members

(1) Every member of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House at the next dissolution of the
National Assembly after his election.
(2) A member of the House of Representatives shall also vacate his seat in the House
(e) if, having been a candidate of a political party and elected to the House of Representatives as a candidate of that
political party, he resigns from that political party or crosses the floor.
Namibia, Article 48. Vacation of Seats
(1) Members of the National Assembly shall vacate their seats:
(b) if the political party which nominated them to sit in the National Assembly informs the Speaker that such members
are no longer members of such political party.
Nepal, Article 49. Vacation of Seats
(1) The seat of a member of Parliament shall become vacant in the following circumstances:
(f ) if the party of which he was a member when elected provides notification in the manner set forth by law that he has
abandoned the party.
Nigeria, Article 68. Tenure of Seat of Members
(g) being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another
political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected:
Seychelles, Article 81. Vacation of Seats
(1) A person ceases to be a member of the National Assembly and the seat occupied by that person in the Assembly shall
become vacant
27(h) if, in the case of a proportionally elected member
(i) the political party which nominated the person as member nominates another person as member in place of the firstmentioned person and notifies the Speaker in writing of the new nomination;
(ii) the person ceases to be a member of the political party of which that person was a member at the time of the election; or
Sierra Leone, Article 77. Tenure of Seats of Members of Parliament
(1) A Member of Parliament shall vacate his seat in Parliament
(k) if he ceases to be a member of the political party of which he was a member at the time of his election to Parliament
and he so informs the Speaker, or the Speaker is so informed by the Leader of that political party;
Singapore, Article 46
(2) The seat of a Member of Parliament shall become vacant
(b) if he ceases to be a member of, or is expelled or resigns from, the political party for which he stood in the election;
Zimbabwe, Article 41. Tenure of Seats of Members
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, the seat of a member of Parliament shall become vacant only
(e) if, being a member referred to in section 38 (1) (a) and having ceased to be a member of the political party of which
he was a member at the date of his election to Parliament, the political party concerned, by written notice to the
Speaker, declares that he has ceased to represent its interests in Parliament.
Adopting Party Law
13
2001, nor could many southern members of Congress

before him have switched from Democrat to Republican.
Making such defection an unconstitutional act resulting
in the loss of elective office exemplifies the protection
model of making party law.
The Prescription Model

To prescribe means to issue orders, to dictate. Doctors
prescribe medications to remedy ailments; national
governments prescribe party laws to cure what they think is
wrong with the way parties function. At the extreme, the
prescription model of party regulation allows regimes to boast
that they have a multiparty system while controlling the
parties organization and behavior.
Of course, national governments need not push the
prescription model to the extreme in enacting party law. This
paper will provide examples of the extreme version of the
prescription model and then consider nations that prescribe
in moderation. The method here involves searching the
database of party laws for entries under political parties /
organization only in national constitutions. The paper looks
first to prescriptions concerning party organization in
constitutions, which constitute the most durable and
authoritative method of regulation.
The database contains 42 entries for constitutional
prescriptions concerning party organization. Only four
entries come from Western European constitutionsthose
of Germany, Spain, and Portugal (two entries). None of these
European constitutions prescribe party organization in detail,
but Germany and Spain both require parties to operate
according to democratic principles. While this is not a trivial
prescription, it is also not specifically detailed. The relevant
provisions for Germany and Spain are given in Box 8.
Portugals constitution is more detailed in prescribing
party organization (see Box 9). It not only requires parties
to demonstrate democratic organization and management;
it also restricts how they can be named and what can be used
as party symbols.
This assessment of provisions on party organization in
Western European constitutions makes two main points: (1)
relatively few Western nations deal with party organization
at the constitutional level; and (2) the few that prescribe
14
BOX 8: CONSTITUTIONS THAT

PRESCRIBE PARTY ORGANIZATION
GERMANY AND SPAIN
Germany, Article 21
(1) Political parties participate in the formation of the
political will of the people. They may be freely
established. Their internal organization must conform
to democratic principles. They must publicly account
for their assets and for the sources and the use of their
funds.
Spain, Article 6 [Political Parties]
Political parties express democratic pluralism, assist in
the formulation and manifestation of the popular will,
and are a basic instrument for political participation.
Their creation and the exercise of their activity are
free within the observance of the Constitution and
the laws. Their internal structure and operation must
be democratic.
party organization in constitutions do so in moderation. In

fact, moderation also characterizes most of the other 38
constitutional prescriptions on party organization. All 11
Latin American countries in the set of 38 have provisions
similar to those of Germany, Spain, and Portugal. Most
nationseven those in transitional stages of democratic
developmentdo not use their constitutions to prescribe
how parties should be organized.
A few developing nations, however, have used their
constitutions to micromanage party organization and
behavior. For example, consider the constitutions of Nepal,
Liberia, and Nigeria. The 1990 constitution of Nepal (see
Box 10) prescribes rules for party registration that include
providing names and addresses of party leaders, requiring
election of officers at minimum every five years, and
restricting what names or symbols a party can use.
Two articles in the 1984 Liberian constitution (see Box
11, on page 16) are even more detailed as to how parties
must register, how they are named, where they can be located,
and when they must select officers.
The constitution of Nigeria discusses political parties in
several articles. As documented in Box 12, on page 17, one
article (Restrictions on Formation of Political Parties)
requires that names and addresses of party officials be
BOX 9: A CONSTITUTION THAT

PRESCRIBES PARTY ORGANIZATION
PORTUGAL
Article 51. Political Associations and Parties
(3) Without prejudice to the philosophy or ideology
underlying their programs, political parties cannot use
names that contain expressions directly connected
with any religion or church, or use emblems that may
be mistaken for national or religious symbols.
(4) No party can be established with a name or stated
aims that indicate a regional connection or field of
action.
(5) Political parties must be governed by the principles
of transparency, democratic organization and
management and the participation of all of its
members.
registered with the national election commission, that any

changes in party rules be reported to the election
commission within 30 days, and that the party headquarters
be located in the Federal Capital Territory. It also forbids
parties from using names or symbols that pertain to any
ethnic, religious, or regional group. The other article
prescribes the periodic elections (no more than every four
years) of party officials, who must be drawn from no less
than two-thirds of all the federal states.
Of course, these sections of the Nigerian constitution
reflect the strong ethnic (tribal and religious) differences
among the majority groups that have dominated each of
Nigerias three regions: the Hausa/Fulani in the north, the
Yoruba in the west, and the Igbo in the east. As stated in the
CIA World Factbook:
(6) The law shall establish regulations on the financing

of political parties, specifically in relation to the
requirements and limits of public financing, as well
as requirement of publicity relating to their property
and accounts.
BOX 10: CONSTITUTIONS
THAT
The major political parties that emerged in the regions

and controlled them were based on these groups. With
regional autonomy, the major groups became the major
shareholders of the federation. Power-sharing and
political calculations have consequently centered on
ensuring a balance of power among these groups.38
MICROMANAGE POLITICAL PARTIESNEPAL
Article 113. Registration Required for Securing Recognition for the Purpose of Contesting Elections as a Political
Organisation or Party
(1) Any political organisation or party wishing to secure recognition from the Election Commission for the purposes of
elections, shall be required to register its name with the office of the Election Commission in accordance with the
procedure as determined by the Commission. A Petition so submitted for registration shall contain clear information
about the name of the concerned political organisation or party, the names and addresses of the members of its executive
committee or any such other committee and such petition shall be accompanied by the rules and manifesto of the
organisation or the party.
(2) Political organisations and parties shall be required to fulfill, in addition to the matters contained in this Part, the
following conditions in order to qualify for registration pursuant to clause (1) above:
(a) the constitution and the rules of the political organisation or party must be democratic;
(b) the constitution or the rules of the organisation or party must provide for election of office bearers of the organisation
or party at least once every five years;
(c) must have complied with the provisions of Article 114; and
(d) must have secured a minimum of three percent of the total votes cast in the election to the House of Representatives:
(3) The Election Commission shall not register any political organisation or party if any Nepali citizen is discriminated
against in becoming a member on the basis of religion, caste, tribe, language or sex or if the name, objectives, insignia
or flag is of such a nature that it is religious or communal or tends to fragment the country.
Adopting Party Law
15
THAT
MICROMANAGE POLITICAL PARTIESLIBERIA
Article 79
No association, by whatever name called, shall function as a political party, nor shall any citizen be an independent
candidate for election to public office, unless:
a. the association or independent candidate and his organization meet the minimum registration requirements laid
down by the Elections Commission and are registered with it. Registration requirements shall include filing with the
Elections Commission a copy of the constitution of the association and guidelines of the independent candidate and his
organization, a detailed statement of the names and addresses of the association and its officers or of the independent
candidate and the officers of his organization, and fulfillment of the provision of sub-sections (b), (c), (d) and (e) hereof.
Registration by the Elections Commission of any association or independent candidate and his organization shall vest
in the entity or candidate and his organization so registered legal personality, with the capacity to own property, real,
personal or mixed, to sue and be sued and to hold accounts. A denial of registration or failure by the Elections Commission
to register any applicant may be challenged by the applicant in the Supreme Court;
b. the membership of the association or the independent candidates organization is open to every citizen of Liberia,
irrespective of sex, religion or ethnic background, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution.
c. the headquarters of the association or independent candidate and his organization is situated:
i. in the capital of the Republic where an association is involved or where an independent candidate seeks election to the
office of President or Vice-President;
ii. in the headquarters of the county where an independent candidate seeks election as a Senator; and
iii. in the electoral center in the constituency where the candidate seeks election as a member of the House of
Representatives or to any other public office;
d. the name, objective, emblem or motto of the association or of the independent candidate and his organization is free
from any religious connotations or divisive ethnic implications and that the activities of the association or independent
candidate are not limited to a special group or, in the case of an association, limited to a particular geographic area of
Liberia;
e. the constitution and rules of the political party shall conform to the provisions of this Constitution, provide for the
democratic elections of officers and/or governing body at least once every six years, and ensure the election of officers
from as many of the regions and ethnic groupings in the country as possible. All amendments to the Constitution or
rules of a political party shall be registered with the Elections Commission no later than ten days from the effective dates
of such amendments.
Accordingly, the constitution makers sought to ensure

that the political parties would have to aggregate ethnic
interests along with interests encouraging cooperation in
party politics. As Benjamin Reilly has written, both scholars
and policy makers have endorsed such political engineering,
which constrains the growth of ethnic parties and encourages
broad-based, aggregative, and multi-ethnic parties to avoid
interethnic violence.39
Regardless of the reasoning that prompted these
prescriptions in the Nigerian constitution, the example in
16
Box 12and those for Nepal and Liberia in Boxes 10 and

11, respectivelyillustrate how political parties can be
shaped and controlled through national constitutions. For
the most part, however, governments prescribe party behavior
not in constitutions but through legislative statutes, often
through special Party Laws.
The database contains 117 entries under Special Party
Lawscodified statutes for governing political parties.
Thirteen of those entries prescribe, often in great detail, how
political parties should be organized. For example, the 1964
THAT
MICROMANAGE POLITICAL PARTIESNIGERIA
Article 222. Restrictions on Formation of Political Parties

No association by whatever name called shall function as a political party, unless
(a) the names and addresses of its national officers are registered with the Independent National Electoral Commission;
(b) the membership of the association is open to every citizen of Nigeria irrespective of his place of origin, circumstance
of birth, sex, religion or ethnic grouping;
(c) a copy of its constitution is registered in the principal office of the Independent National Electoral Commission in
such form as may be prescribed by the Independent National Electoral Commission;
(d) any alteration in its registered constitution is also registered in the principal office of the Independent National
Electoral Commission within thirty days of the making of such alteration;
(e) the name of the association, its symbol or logo does not contain any ethnic or religious connotation or give the
appearance that the activities of the association are confined to a part only of the geographical area of Nigeria; and
(f ) the headquarters of the association is situated in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Article 223. Constitution and Rules of Political Parties
(1) The constitution and rules of a political party shall
(a) provide for the periodical election on a democratic basis of the principal officers and members of the executive
committee or other governing body of the political party; and
(b) ensure that the members of the executive committee or other governing body of the political party reflect the federal
character of Nigeria.
(2) For the purposes of this section
(a) the election of the officers or members of the executive committee of a political party shall be deemed to be periodical
only if it is made at regular intervals not exceeding four years; and
(b) the members of the executive committee or other governing body of the political party shall be deemed to reflect the
federal character of Nigeria only if the members thereof belong to different States not being less in number than twothirds of all the States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
German Party Law (as amended in 1994) prescribes party

organization in great detail. Wolfgang Mller argues that
Germany is the Western European country in which party
law has the greatest relevance.40 The single entry for political
party / organization in the database for the German Party
Law (not shown here) contains more than 2,000 words from
11 Articles. It is highly prescriptive.
Given the vigor of contemporary German party politics,
Germanys meticulous state regulation of party organization
and activity has obviously not hampered the development
of strong, democratic parties. One wonders, however, what
Adopting Party Law
the effect of heavy state regulation is on political party

formation and operation in countries such as Jordan, Yemen,
Cambodia, and Indonesia. None of these nations was rated
as Free in the 2003 Freedom House ratings, yet all prescribe
party organization and operation in great detail. Let us look
more closely at some provisions in the Jordanian 1992
Political Parties Law (see Box 13 on the following page).
Article 4 in Box 13 says that Jordanians have the right to
form political parties and to voluntarily join them according
to the provisions of the Law. These provisions are quite
specific (see Articles 7 and 22 in Box 13). The Jordanian
17
BOX 13: PRESCRIBING PARTY ORGANIZATION
IN
PARTY LAWSJORDAN
Article 4
Jordanians have the right to form political parties and to voluntarily join them according to the provisions of the Law.
Article 7
A. The application for establishing the Party shall be submitted to the Minister signed by the founders with the following
information and documents attached thereto:
1. Three copies of the Partys Memorandum of Association signed by the founders.
2. A list of the names of the founders in four parties, and the place and date of birth, occupation, work and address of
each founder.
3. A certified copy of the Birth Certificate of each of the founders, or a certified copy of the Family Book or Personal
Identification Card.
4. A non-conviction certificate for each of the founders.
5. A certificate signed by five of the founders before the employee designated by the Minister testifying to the authenticity
of the signatures of all the founders and the information concerning them. Each one of these five founders shall specify,
in this certificate, his address or chosen residence where documents, notices and letters issued by the Ministry can be
delivered to him.
B. The designated employee shall issue a notice of receipt of the establishment application indicating herein the date of
submitting the application and the information and documents attached thereto.
Article 22
The Party shall keep the following records and statements at its main headquarters:
(a) The Partys Memorandum of Association.
(b) The names, addresses and residences of the Partys members, founding members and leadership members.
(c) A record of the decisions of the leadership.
(d) A detailed record of the revenues and expenditures of the Party.
government requires (among other things): (a) addresses of

all branch party offices; (b) knowledge of procedures for
forming the Partys echelons, choosing its leaders, regulating
its relationship with its members; (c) reports on the financial
and administrative competencies for any of these echelons;
(d) storage at the partys main headquarters of names,
addresses and residences of the Partys members, records of
decisions of the leadership; and (e) a detailed record of
the revenues and expenditures of the Party.
One can argue that the Jordan Party Law (Box 13)and
the Party Laws of Yemen, Cambodia, and Indonesia, not
illustrated hereare not much more detailed than the
German Party Law or similar laws in other advanced
18
democracies. Party Laws in advanced and transitional

democracies, however, differ greatly according to when they
were created and who created them. The German Party Law
was passed only after 35 years of experience with party
politics, and it was created with the participation of vigorous
political parties. Although the German law regulated party
practices, it effectively recognized established practices of
competitive parties. In this regard, its passage fits the
promotion model more than the prescription model. Because
strong, independent parties did not design party laws in
Jordan, Yemen, Cambodia, and Indonesia, authoritarian
ruling forces had more latitude to prescribe how parties would
be created and organized.
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND KEY ISSUES

IN P ARTY LAW
The type of parties that operate in a nation and the
nature of that nations party politics depend heavily on the
legal framework that governs parties and party politics.
Writing on the role of institutions in party change,
Wolfgang Mller holds that state laws governing political
parties constitute
the most direct form of state intervention in party
politics. In principle, party laws can require political
parties to fulfill specific conditions that relate to
content (e.g., intra-party democracy, acceptance of
the democratic order) and/or to form (e.g., party
statute, minimal level of activity).41
Recognizing the power of party law, one must consider
the contextual factors and issues that condition its design
and implementation. Drawing on information presented
above under the five models of party law, this section discusses
the models suitability to different socioeconomic and
political circumstances.
Civil Prerequisites:
Is the Country Ready for Party Law?
As implied above, contemporary party systems in most
advanced democracies predated party law. Usually, these
countries constitutions did not mention parties, which were
either nonexistent or embryonic when the constitution was
adopted. Moreover, party law in these countries usually
regulated parties only after they had taken shape, grown
strong, and participated in government. Through party law,
nations can preserve a competitive party system once it has
been created, but states or their rulers are unlikely to create
a system of independent competitive political parties through
legislation or fiat.
To illustrate the limits on even a strong states ability to
create a competitive party system from scratch, consider the
case of Iran in the mid-1950s under the rule of Muhammad
Reza Shah Pahlavi. At the time, Western leaders welcomed
the shah as a modernizer. He enacted some economic
reforms, advanced the status of women, and generally curbed
the power of religious leaders. Although Iran had a
Adopting Party Law
parliament, the shah practiced imperial rule, and his country

lacked few trappings of democracy that might have made
his rule more acceptable to his Western friends. As I have
written:
By 1957, the shah decided that the country needed a
stable two-party system, and he sponsored the start of
two parties. He invited then prime minister
Manuchehr Eqbal to form one party, called the
Nationalist (Melliyun) Party, and encouraged the
former prime minister, Assadollah Alam, to form the
other party, called the Peoples (Mardom) Party. These
parties engaged primarily members of the elite and
had little penetration outside the Iranian parliament
(Majlis). Nevertheless, the two parties squabbled
during the 1960 elections, which were annulled
because of charges of fraud on behalf of the Nationalist
Party, which held the government. A second election
in 1961 was also voided, as the shah despaired of his
attempt to fashion Iranian politics after the British
two-party model and dissolved the Majlis.42
The shahs flirtation with a two-party system in the 1960s
ended upon learning that party competition can be messy
and unpredictable, even for parties created in-house. As
Ingrid van Biezen observes, many parties in democratizing
countries today also had almost no presence on the ground
before they were created from within the party in public
office, or acquired parliamentary representation (and often
also government responsibility) almost immediately after
their formation.43 In political life, every organization is a
rival to every other organization. Once formed, parties do
not encourage rivals.
Creating a political party is a risky business, and the
business analogy is instructive. Indeed, Issacharoff and
Pildes evaluate court decisions on party regulation according
to whether the decisions advance or obstruct the market
for the partisan control of government. 44 Economic
entrepreneurs incur financial costs when starting companies
that may not repay their investments, but political
entrepreneurs incur both financial and political costs when
starting parties. Beyond risking money, party founders risk
the loss of their reputations and even political retaliation.
There are other parallels between starting a business and
founding a party: Just as comprehensive and detailed
government regulations can prevent economic
entrepreneurs from starting, building, and growing their
businesses, comprehensive and detailed party law can
19
prevent political entrepreneurs from starting, building, and

growing parties.
Therefore, before drafting party law for a nation in
transition to democracy, one should ask: Are the nation,
and its parties, ready for party law? Simon Chesterman
cautions that elections held in developing nations soon after
the end of armed conflict can spawn political parties that
are primarilyand sometimes solelyvehicles to provide
local elites with access to governing power. Such parties may
be little more than a repackaging of the armed groups that
fought the original conflict.45 Governing without parties,
elaborating on their meanings. For example, Gunther and

Diamond refer to parties as vehicles for the articulation and
aggregation of interests, but then list only interest
aggregation as one of seven key party functions.47 The
differences between these often linked but rarely
differentiated concepts need to be considered carefully.
however, is not the answer. In that case, Chesterman warns,

political life is dominated exclusively by the elite personalities
involved: this is the danger of a no-party democracy such as
that embraced in Yoweri Musevenis Uganda.46
groups by aggregating rather than articulating interests.48
To articulate an interest means to express it clearly. To

aggregate interests means to collect and balance different
(often competing) interests. Parties with broad social bases
normally aggregate diverse interests rather than articulate
specific ones. And parties normally differ from interest
However, some parties (such as European Green and
religious parties) rate higher than others in interest
articulation and lower in interest aggregation. Ethnic parties
in particular are thought to articulate their ethnic interests
ahead of societal concerns. That explains why Reilly writes
The Level of the Law:

Starting at the Top?
that scholars and policy makers alike have frequently

identified the need to build broad-based, aggregative and
Suppose a nation has a young but vigorous multiparty

system. Suppose also that those in power, or those exerting
external influence, find that it is too vigorous. Perhaps the
parties do not campaign very civilly; or perhaps so many
parties split the popular vote that none has close to a
parliamentary majority, making stable government
impossible. If it is decided that some law is needed to impose
order, at what level should it be written? Should party law
be enacted in constitutions or in legislative statutes?
The database reveals that many countries use their
constitutions as a vehicle for party law, prescribing party
organization and behavior in considerable detail. Given that
constitutions are more difficult to change than statutes,
ensconcing party law in constitutions produces rigid
regulation that can freeze parties and party systems in
awkward, dysfunctional shapes. If party law is needed,
legislative statutes provide more nimble vehicles than
constitutions for carrying the needed regulations.
Type of Party:
To Aggregate or Articulate Interests?
Party scholars often use the terms aggregation and
articulation as functions of political parties without
20
multi-ethnic political parties if inter-ethnic violence is to

be avoided and the routines of peaceful democratic politics
consolidated in fragile multi-ethnic states.49 That ethnic
parties promote domestic instability and threaten democratic
institutions is the prevailing view in comparative politics.50
However, there is a contradictory view, often associated
with Arend Lijphart, that sees democratic potential in ethnic
parties. Lijphart argues for a consociational democracy in
which ethnic groups are directly represented in
government.51 More recently, Kanchan Chandra has argued
that ethnic parties can sustain a democracy if the political
institutions are appropriately devisedfor example, to
ensure variation of ethnic identities across public policy
contexts and levels of government.52 Others involved more
directly in democracy promotion in multiethnic countries
argue similarly that ethnic parties are in some cases inevitable.
On making party law in contemporary Iraq, Morton
Abramowitz writes:
The instinctual reaction may be for members of the
drafting committee to press for legislation outlawing
religious political parties. However, an outright ban
on religious parties may have the effect of adding to
the groups luster as well as decreasing the legitimacy
of the burgeoning democracy. A law that requires all
political parties to be secular is not natural to the region

and would most likely be seen as forced upon the
people by the American government.53
These considerations on the articulative functions of
political parties should lead one at least to reexamine the
tendency to view the prevention of ethnic parties (as in the
Nigerian constitution, cited in Box 12 on page 17) as an
unalloyed good.
Parties and Presidents:

Are They Incompatible?
The powers of presidential office vary greatly across
nations. In some, as in the United States, the president is
both head of government and head of state. In others, as in
Germany, the president is head of state (serving largely in a
ceremonial role) and not head of government. Therefore,
any analysis of the partisan nature of the office needs to
consider whether the president is actually head of
government or only head of state. If presidents do indeed
head governments composed of political parties, one would
expect that presidents should be linked to parties in their
governments.
Given that expectation, one might be surprised to find
that presidents were prohibited from engaging in party
activities in about 20 national constitutions. The wording
in constitutions for 11 countriesAlbania (1998), Belarus
(1996), Bulgaria (amended 2003), Chad (1996), Estonia
(1992), Kazakhstan (amended 1998), Kyrgyzstan (amended
2003), Lithuania (1992), Niger (1999), Turkey (amended
2002), and Uruguay (amended 1996)is given in Box 14,
on the following page. All contain nearly blanket prohibitions
against leading a party in government. (The 1996 Bangladesh
constitution [not shown] offers a different twist, stating that
the president must appoint advisors from among those who
are not members of any political party or of any organisation
associated with or affiliated to any political party.54)
As yet, there is no comprehensive analysis of constitutional
prohibitions according to the governmental status of the
presidency. However, the presidents of Chad and Kazakhstan
serve as both head of government and head of state, and
both presidents wield enormous powers. Therefore, the head
of state defense of the party prohibition cannot apply in all
Adopting Party Law
cases in Box 14. It is more likely, instead, that nullifying any

party role for the president reflects a romantic attempt to
portray the president as above party politics.55 (Russian
President Boris Yeltsin took that posture during his tenure
with unsatisfactory results.) To the extent that constitutions
insulate government leadership from political parties, their
framers deny that parties play a positive role in democratic
government. Or perhaps the framers see the role but do not
value it, which is even more troublesome.
Type of Government:
Parliamentary or Presidential?
Parties operate differently in parliamentary and
presidential systems. This contextual distinction needs to be
considered when thinking about shaping parties through
party law. More than 50 years ago, in his classic book, Les
Partis politiques, Maurice Duverger wrote that political parties
are influenced by the structure of government, especially by
the separation of powers in presidential systems versus the
joining of powers in parliamentary governments.56 Recently,
however, David Samuels has argued that party scholars have
ignored this factor, writing:
Comparative research on political parties truly began
with the study of western Europe, where
parliamentarism dominates and constitutional
structure is thus not an independent variable. Because
comparativists interested in political parties have
largely built on concepts developed for the western
European experience and have ignored potential
insights from presidentialism in the United States, we
lack general hypotheses about how the separation of
powers affects political parties.57
Moreover, many emerging democracies have adopted
presidential forms of government. Long characteristic of
Latin America, presidentialism has become common in postcommunist and African states. Noting the limited degree
of scholarly attention given to the effect of presidentialism
on party systems, Terry Clark and Jill Wittrock found in
their cross-national study of post-communist states in Europe
that strong presidents greatly reduce the incentives for parties
to vie for control of a legislature that lacks control over either
policy making or the process of making and breaking
governments.58 Other studies have shown the distorting
21
BOX 14: CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITIONS
AGAINST
PARTY POLITICS
BY
PRESIDENTS
Albania, Article 89
The President of the Republic may not hold any other public duty, may not be a member of a party or carry out other
private activity.
Belarus, Article 86
The President shall suspend his membership in political parties and other public associations that pursue political goals
during the whole term in office.
Bulgaria, Article 95
(2) The President and the Vice President may not be national representatives, engage in another state, public, or economic
activity, and participate in the leadership of any political party.
Chad, Article 71
The functions of the President of the Republic are incompatible with the exercise of any other elected mandate, any
public employment and of any other professional and lucrative activity.
They are also incompatible with any activity within a party or a group of political parties or a syndical organization.
Estonia, Article 84
Upon assuming office the authority and duties of the President of the Republic in all elected and appointed offices shall
terminate, and he or she shall suspend his or her membership in political parties for the duration of his or her term of
office.
Kazakhstan, Article 43
2. For the period he exercises his powers the President of the Republic suspends activity in a political party.
Kyrgyzstan, Article 43
5. The President of the Kyrgyz Republic must suspend his activity in political parties and organizations during the term
of office until the beginning of new elections of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Lithuania, Article 83
The President of the Republic may not be a member of the Seimas or hold any other office, and may not receive any
remuneration other than the salary established for the President as well as compensation for creative activities.
A person elected President of the Republic must suspend his or her activities in political parties and political organisations
until a new presidential election campaign begins.
Niger, Article 44
During the duration of his mandate, the President of the Republic may not be President or member of the government
body of a political party or of any national association.
Turkey, Article 101
The President-elect, if a member of a party, severs his relations with his party and his status as a member of the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey ceases.
Uruguay, Article 77
5. The President of the Republic and members of the Electoral Court may not belong to political committees or clubs,
nor hold directive positions in party organizations, nor take part in any way in political election propaganda;
22
effect of strong presidents on party politics in Latin America

and Africa.59
Whether the governmental structure is presidential or
parliamentary is especially important for the power structure
within a political party. In Party Discipline and Parliamentary
Government, the editors state at the outset: Cohesion and
disciple matter in the daily running of parliaments. The
maintenance of a cohesive voting bloc inside a legislative
body is a crucially important feature of parliamentary life.60
This brings us to the matter of intra-party democracy.
Political Parties and Democracy:

Inter- or Intra-?
A vexing issue in the prescription model of party law is
the tension between achieving democracy through inter-party
competition versus intra-party democracy. Inter-party
competition means competition among parties to win
popular votes in order to gain political office. Intra-party
democracy is manifested in internal party procedures that
extend, if not maximize, the participation of the party rankand-file in decisions of public policy and party practice. Of
course, these two are not necessarily incompatible, but the
tension between them may be great, even critical, based on
gaps among what other parties are offering to voters, the
centrifugal demands of social and political development, and
the limited speed in adaptability of party organizations.
Should laws be drafted that promote intra-party democracy
as well as inter-party competition?
Party scholars make a distinction between discrete reforms
adopted due to problems in party development which may
promote diversity and decentralize power, on one hand, and
external requirements for specific forms of intra-party
democracy, on the other. To the extent that practitioners want
party law to require and prescribe how parties should organize
themselves, they may be going against what party scholars
understand to be the connection between political parties and
democracyand risk damaging the ability of parties to adapt.
CONCLUSION
This paper began with a question: How closely should
nations regulate political parties? Or, in the terms of the
Adopting Party Law
Goldilocks fable: How much party law is just right?61 My

reading of how and when party law has been applied across
nations leads to these conclusions:
1. In most advanced democracies, political parties were
created and grew strong without being mentioned in
national constitutions.
2. Even today, many advanced democracies lack any
overarching legislative statute regulating parties in the
form of a Party Law.
3. Most advanced democracies that do have a Party Law
enacted it after their parties had matured and with the
parties participation.
4. In contrast, governments in many developing nations
regulate parties in constitutions written prior to the
formation or development of parties.
5. In addition, governments in some developing nations
have enacted detailed statutes that prescribe how
fledgling parties should organize and operate.
6. Whether incorporated in constitutions or in statutes,
detailed party law prescribing how parties should operate
may have a chilling effect on the formation and
functioning of parties in emerging democracies.
7. Moreover, governments in some developing nations have
enacted statutes that protect existing parties or bolster
the parties leadership.
8. By enacting too much party law under the
prescription or protection models, governments can
deter the creation of political parties or control the
development of parties that are created.
9. By enacting too little party law under the permissive
model, nations can suffer having a surfeit of minor parties
in a chaotic government.
10. However, having too little party law tends to be a
temporary condition soon corrected by legislation backed
by the government and larger parties.
11. The permissive model of party law may encourage the
formation and development of political parties in
developing countries better than the prescription
model.
Scholars of party lawboth lawyers and political
scientistsare sensitive to normative and empirical issues
23
in theories that underlie party regulation. Magarians

distinction between private-rights versus public-rights
legal theories raises a normative issue. He links the privaterights theory in the United States to
an explicitly pluralist vision of political parties, in
which the major parties serve as mediating institutions
that channel interest group competition and prevent
conflicts from shredding the social fabric or producing
majoritarian tyranny. On the this account, the major
parties need substantial autonomy from regulation.62
Magarian favors a public-rights theory of regulation that
elevates group (public) rights over individual (private) rights.
He would permit regulating campaign finance more
aggressively and ending the U.S. party duopoly with
multiparty politics. Magarians view differs sharply from
current practice of party regulation in the U.S. and from the
minimalist school of regulation, which is also popular in
other advanced democracies, such as Australia.63
Empirical theory, which predicts how party law will affect
party politics, is also problematic. Reviewing attempts at the
political engineering of party systems, Reilly concludes that
viewing parties as malleable entities which can be engineered
in the same manner as other parts of the political system
remains controversial.64 Party law often has unintended, if
not perverse, effects. Accordingly, attempts to advance
democracy through party politics should not be abandoned,
but they should be cautiously approached and carefully
interrogated. Above all, such attempts should respect
Hippocrates advice on healing: Declare the past, diagnose
the present, foretell the future. As to diseases, make a habit
of two thingsto help, or at least to do no harm.65
24
APPENDIX: DATABASE OF PARTY LAWS

The 1,101 laws in the searchable database created for this study were identified by governmental origin and intended target.
These laws were entered into the database using the widely used commercial program, FileMaker Pro 7.66 Figure A, below,
provides a screenshot of one of the databases 1,101 pages.
FIGURE A: ONE
OF THE
1,101 E NTRIES IN
THE
D ATABASE
OF
PARTY LAWS
The boxes in the figure hold pull-down menus that, when clicked, display various options for retrieving party laws. For example,
the menu in the box under Political parties allows one to search for laws pertaining to definition, legal status, membership, organization,
selecting candidates, activities, public subsidies, party finance, prohibited members, and history. Searching the database for political party
/ definition returns 37 laws out of 1,101 entries. The entry shown in Figure A is the definition of a political party as contained in the
1997 Party Law for Cambodia. Box A, below, lists the full set of search options hidden in each of the topical boxes.
BOX A: SEARCH OPTIONS OFFERED
IN
COMPUTER DATABASE MENUS
Origin of National Rule: Constitution, Referendum, Legislative statute, Court law, Executive order, Parliamentary
rule, Administrative rule, Unspecified
Political Parties:
Definition, Legal status, Membership, Organization, Selecting candidates, Activities, Public
subsidies, Party finance, Prohibited members, History.
Political Groups:
Definition, Legal status, Social basis, Organization, Activities, Raising funds, Spending funds
Elections:
Principles, Method, Timing, Ballot, Sanctions
Campaigns:
Duration, Raising funds, Spending funds, Public subsidies, Activities, Media, Polling
Candidates:
Definition, Selection, Deposits, Activities, Raising funds, Spending funds
Voters:
Qualifications, Registration, Absentee
Government:
Qualifications, Disqualifications, Organization, Jurisdiction
Adopting Party Law
25
Contents of the Database

The database is comprehensive, covering polities from around the world. Table A, on the opposite page, reports the distribution
of party laws by world regions. Although comprehensive, the database is far from exhaustive, including only a portion of the
worlds party laws. Moreover, it is not representative in the statistical sense of being a probabilistic sample. An alphabetical listing
of the polities in the database is provided in Table B, below.
The laws came from material at hand, primarily books and Internet sources. More laws in the database come from national
constitutions than from any other source, which is due to the existence of a searchable Internet source of the worlds constitutions
translated into English.67 All of the most recent constitutions were electronically searched for references to political or party
or parties. (Searching national constitutions only for political party or political parties proved inadequate, for some
constitutions simply used party as shorthand for political party. Unfortunately, virtually all constitutions also used party in
the more legal sense of affected party, which meant that most hits in the search of more than 100 constitutions were irrelevant.)
A smaller but still large group of party laws (198) originates in general legislative statutes, and nearly as many (117) come
from special Party Laws. Another large group (126) is of unspecified origin, with smaller groups having other sources (12)
or none (15). Fewer than 100 come from other governmental sources.
National constitutions are a source of party laws more often in Latin America, Africa, and Central/Eastern Europe than in
Western Europe and Anglo-America. The unrepresentative nature of this database precludes definitive statements about party
law across nations. Nevertheless, it does contain a large number of party laws, which permits illustrative if not definitive observations.
TABLE B: ALPHABETICAL L IST

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua/Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bolivia
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burma
Burundi
26
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Republic of Congo (Brazzaville)
Costa Rica
Cote dIvoire
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
OF
POLITIES
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
IN THE
PARTY LAW DATABASE
Kiribati
Korea, North
Korea, South
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Moldova
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Samoa
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
St. Kitts
St. Lucia
St. Vincent
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad
Adopting Party Law
27
8%
8%
3%
2%
8%
22%
247
9.5
2.4
Special Party Law
Electoral Law
Court Law
Parliamentary Rule
Referendum
None, Unspecified, or Other
Number of Laws Identified
Average Total Number of Laws per Country
Average Number of Party Laws Based in

Constitutional Origins per Country
4.2
5.9
188
16%
3.3
7.3
154
7%
18%
29%
7%
32%
General Legislative Statutes and Laws

6%
45%
71%
25%
Asia
Far East
Constitution or Constitutional Law
Origin of Party Law Provision
BY
REGION
OF THE
WORLD
3.8
4.8
4.6
1.9
221
5%
35%
74
3%
20%
12%
80%
40%
4%
Africa
Middle East
Most Common (Modal) Category Shaded
PARTY LAW O RIGINS
Latin America
Caribbean
OF
Western Europe
Anglo-America
TABLE A: DISTRIBUTION
52%
54%
2.3
7.5
1.2
21
196
4.1
48%
10%
6%
10%
20%
Oceana
Central Europe
(and Former
Soviet Union)
BOX B: A LONG ENTRY IN THE DATABASEJORDANS DEFINITION OF A POLITICAL PARTY

Article 3
A Party is every political organisation which is formed by a group of Jordanians in accordance with the Constitution
and the provisions of the Law, for the purpose of participating in political life and achieving specific goals concerning
political, economic and social affairs, which works through legitimate and peaceful means.
Article 5
The number of the founding members of any Party shall not be less than fifty persons who meet the following
conditions:
A. to have completed 25 years of age.
B. to have been a Jordanian for at least ten years.
C. not to have been finally convicted by a court of proper jurisdiction of a crime (except political crimes) unless he
has been rehabilitated.
D. to enjoy full civil and legal competence.
E. to reside in the Kingdom permanently.
F. not to claim the nationality of another country or foreign protection.
G. not to be a member in any other Party, or any other non-Jordanian political partisan organisation.
H. not to be a member of the Jordanian Armed Forces, Security Instrumentalities or the Civil Defence.
I. not to be a judge.
Article 12
If, for any reason whatsoever, the number of the founding members becomes less than fifty before the announcement
of the establishment of the Party in accordance with the provisions of this Law, the Establishment Application shall be
considered as cancelled.
Western European and Anglo-American countries have more identified party laws overall compared with other regions of
the world: More than one in five of the party laws in this study (22 percent) are found in older democracieslikewise with the
average number of laws per country. Older European and Anglo-American democracies have an average of 9.5 party laws per
country. Only countries located in Central Europe (7.5 laws per country) and Asia (7.3 laws per country) come close to this level
of party regulation.
There are also differences in the origin of identified party laws by region of the world. Older democracies tend to have more
diverse sources and to be the least likely to use constitutional authorities as the dominant means of defining political parties.
Only 25 percent of party laws in Western European and Anglo-American countries come from constitutional sources. Western
European and Anglo-American countries tend to have a low average number of constitutional provisions per country (2.4), as
do countries in Oceana (1.2 constitutional provisions per country) and the Middle East (1.9 constitutional provisions per
country).
Readers should also know what counts as a party lawwhat gets entered into the database. Although every entry pertains to
a legal regulation that affects party politics, the entries vary widely in length and detail. Figure A on page 25 displays the
definition of a political party from the Cambodian Party Law of 1997. Compare that brief entry from the Cambodian law with
the lengthy entry in Box B, above, from the Jordanian Party Law of 1992, which also counts as only one entry in the database
under the same heading, political parties / definitions.
Although these two examples of party law differ substantially in length, each counts as one entry. Both laws pertain to the
legal definition of a political party, but the Jordanian law specifies a number of conditions, which makes it more restrictive.
According to the regulatory models outlined in this paper, the vague Cambodian definition of a political party is permissive,
while the detailed Jordanian definition prescribes what a party should be.
28
ENDNOTES
1. Richard S. Katz, Democracy and the Legal Regulation of Political Parties, paper prepared for the USAID conference on Changes in
Political Parties: United States Agency for International Development, Washington, D.C., October 1, 2004, 2.
2. Gesetz ber die politischen Parteien in German. The Korean translation was furnished by Lee Ki Sun, Director General of Public Information
of the Republic of Koreas National Election Commission. I am indebted to Mr. Lee for providing English translations of all the Korean laws
cited herein.
3. Electoral Commission (U.K), Voting for Change: An Electoral Law Modernisation Programme (London: Electoral Commission, 2003), 28.
4. Shaheen Mozaffar and Andreas Schedler, The Comparative Study of Electoral GovernanceIntroduction, International Political Science
Review 25 (January 2002): 7.
5. The German Bundewahlgesetz translates simply as the Federal Electoral Law. The South Korean Election Law is the Act on the Election
of Public Officials and the Prevention of Election Malpractices.
6. Shaheen Mozaffar and Andreas Schedler, The Comparative Study of Electoral GovernanceIntroduction, 7.
7. Fritz Plasser with Gunda Plasser, Global Political Campaigning: A Worldwide Analysis of Campaign Professionals and Their Practices (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 2002), 13775.
8. Karl-Heinz Nassmacher, Comparative Political Finance in Established Democracies (Introduction), in Karl-Heinz Nassmacher, ed.,
Foundations for Democracy: Approaches to Comparative Political Finance (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgellschaft, 2001), 10.
9. Transparency International, Global Corruption Report 2004 (Berlin, 2004), 12. The report is available in PDF at
www.globalcorruptionreport.org/gcr2004.html.
10. For example, the South Korean Election Law is the Act on the Election of Public Officials and the Prevention of Election Malpractices.
11. Eric Barendt, An Introduction to Constitutional Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 149.
12. Eric Barendt, An Introduction to Constitutional Law, 2629.
13. Hence van Maarseveen and Ger van der Tang, Written Constitutions: A Computerized Comparative Study (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana, 1978), 7172.
14. Jorge Mario Garca Laguardia, Constitutional Framework for Political Parties in Central America: From Exclusion to Participation, in
Louis W. Goodman, William M. LeoGrande, and Johanna Mendelson Forman, eds., Political Parties and Democracy in Central America
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992), 82.
15. Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
1999), 16061.
16. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, eds., Party Organizations: A Data Handbook in Western Democracies, 196090 (London: SAGE, 1992).
17. Fritz Plasser with Gunda Plasser, Regulatory Frameworks of Campaigns, Global Political Campaigning: A Worldwide Analysis of Campaign
Professionals and Their Practices, 13779.
18. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, Financing Politics: A Global View, Journal of Democracy 13 (October 2002): 6986.
19. Office of Democracy and Governance, Money in Politics Handbook: A Guide to Increasing Transparency in Emerging Democracies, Bureau for Democracy,
Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, Document PN-ACR-223, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Agency for International Development, 2003).
20. Reginald Austin and Maja Tjernstrm, eds., Funding of Political Parties and Election Campaigns (Stockholm: International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2003). Available in PDF at www.idea.int/publications/funding_parties/index.cfm.
21. Transparency International, Global Corruption Report 2004 (Berlin, 2004). Available in PDF at www.globalcorruptionreport.org/gcr2004.html.
22. Samuel Issacharoff and Richard H. Pildes, Politics as Markets: Partisan Lockups of the Democratic Process, Stanford Law Review 50
(February 1998): 643717.
23. Samuel Issacharoff and Richard H. Pildes, Politics as Markets: Partisan Lockups of the Democratic Process: 669.
24. Gregory P. Magarian, Regulating Political Parties under a Public Rights First Amendment, William and Mary Law Review 44 (April 2003): 1944.
25. Center for Public Integrity, 527s in 2004 Shatter Previous Records for Political Fundraising, December 16, 2004. See www.bop2004.org/
527/report.aspx?aid=435.
26. Elizabeth Garrett, Is the Party Over? Courts and the Political Process, Supreme Court Law Review (2002): 96.
27. Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, 142.
29. Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, Types and Functions of Parties, in Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther, eds., Political Parties and
Democracy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 339.
31. Fritz Plasser with Gunda Plasser, Global Political Campaigning, 151.
32. See www.freedomhouse.org.
33. Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, User Friendly, Not Abuser Friendly: Report of the Inquiry into the Integrity of the Electoral Roll
(Canberra: Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2001), 81.
Adopting Party Law
29
34. Josep M. Colomer, Its the Parties that Choose Electoral Systems (or Duvergers Laws Upside Down), Political Studies 53 (March 2005): 1
21.
35. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party, Party
Politics 1 (January 1995): 16.
36. Ballot Access News, November 2004.
37. Benjamin Reilly, Political Engineering of Parties and Party Systems, paper prepared for delivery at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, Pa., August 28-31, 2003.
38. See www.photius.com/countries/nigeria/government/nigeria_government_government_and_polit~10019.html.
39. Benjamin Reilly, Political Engineering of Parties and Party Systems.
40. Wolfgang Mller, Parties and the Institutional Framework, in Kurt Richard Luther and Ferdinand Mller-Rommel, eds., Political Parties
in the New Europe: Political and Analytical Challenges (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 262.
41. Wolfgang C. Mller, The Relevance of the State for Party System Change, Journal of Theoretical Politics 5 (October 1993): 41954.
42. Kenneth Janda, Political Parties: A Cross-National Survey (New York: Free Press, 1980), 861.
43. Ingrid van Biezen, On the Theory and Practice of Party Formation and Adaptation in New Democracies, European Journal of Political
Research 44 (January 2005): 154, 165.
44. Samuel Issacharoff and Richard H. Pildes, Politics as Markets: Partisan Lockups of the Democratic Process, 643.
45. Simon Chesterman, You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004), 221.
46. Simon Chesterman, You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building, 223.
47. Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, Types and Functions of Parties, 3, 8. Presumably, Gunther and Diamond would include interest
articulation under the societal representation function.
48. Kenneth Janda, Comparative Political Parties: Research and Theory, in Ada W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline II
(Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1993), 16391.
49. Benjamin Reilly, Political Engineering of Parties and Party Systems, 4.
50. For example, see Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory in Democratic Instability (Columbus, Ohio:
Charles E. Merrill, 1972).
51. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
52. Kanchan Chandra, Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability, Perspectives on Politics 3 (June 2005): 23552.
53. Morton Abramowitz, Establishing a Stable Democratic Constitutional Structure in Iraq: Some Basic Considerations (New York and Washington:
Century Foundation, 2003), 50.
54. Article 58c.
55. Ivan Doherty, Democracy out of Balance: Civil Society Cant Replace Political Parties, Policy Review (AprilMay 2001): 2535.
56. Maurice Duverger, Les Partis politiques (Paris: Seuil, 1992).
57. David J. Samuels, Presidentialized Parties: The Separation of Powers and Party Organization and Behavior, Comparative Political Studies
35 (May 2002): 46162.
58. Terry Clark and Jill Wittrock, Presidentialism and the Effect of Electoral Law in Postcommunist Systems: Regime Type Matters, Comparative
Political Studies 38 (March 2005), 17273.
59. Luigi Manzetti, Keeping Accounts: A Case Study of Civic Initiatives and Campaign Finance Oversight in Argentina, Washington, D.C.:
USAIDPCE-I-00-97-00042-00, Working Paper No. 248, November 2000; Todd A. Eisenstadt, Catching the State Off Guard: Electoral
Courts, Campaign Finance, and Mexicos Separation of State and Ruling Party, Party Politics 10, no. 6 (2004): 72345; Matthijs Bogaards,
Counting parties and identifying dominant party systems in Africa, European Journal of Political Research 43 (2004), 17397.
60. Shaun Bowler, David M. Farrell, and Richard S. Katz, Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1998), 3.
61. For other treatments of this question, see Gary Johns, Desirability of Regulating Political Parties, Agenda 8 (December 2001); Richard
Cullen, Regulating Parties in Hong Kong, paper prepared for the Panel on Constitutional Affairs, Legislative Council of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region Meeting, The Role and Development of Political Parties, February 2005; Elizabeth Garrett, Is the Party
Over? Courts and the Political Process; Scott Bennett, Australias Political Parties: More Regulation? Australian Department of the
Parliamentary Library, Research Paper Number 21, 2002; and Fabrice E. Lehoucq, Can Parties Police Themselves? Electoral Governance
and Democratization, International Political Science Review, 25 (January 2002): 2946.
62. Gregory P. Magarian, Regulating Political Parties under a Public Rights First Amendment, 1966.
63. Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, User Friendly, Not Abuser Friendly, 81; Scott Bennett, Australias Political Parties: More
Regulation? 14.
64. Benjamin Reilly, Political Engineering of Parties and Party Systems, 20.
65. Translation of Epidemics, Book I, Section XI. See www.geocities.com/everwild7/noharm.html.
66. This program runs on both Windows and Macintosh computers and can also be run from a server over the Internet.
67. See www.oceanalaw.com. (There is a hefty fee to subscribe to the online service. The parent printed source is Albert P. Blaustein and Gisbert.
H. Flanz, eds., Constitutions of the Countries of the World (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana, 1971). The online source is regularly updated.)
30
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POLITICAL PARTIES AND

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POLITICAL PARTIES AND

N ATIONAL D EMOCRATIC I NSTITUTE

A WORLDWIDE SURVEY OF PARTY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND KEY ISSUES IN PARTY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY IN THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVES

Project Manager: Victoria Canavor