The system of political party funding as a sign of weakly institutionalized party system in Slovakia.

AuthorStefancik, Radoslav
PositionReport

Introduction

The aim of the authors of this text is to determine how the financing of political parties is adjusted to environments featuring a weakly institutionalized party system. As our findings are based on the assumption that the Slovak party system can be characterized as weakly-institutionalized, we expect to find that the system of financial support for political parties will be based on single donor funding, i. e. income from one source, namely, that the government budget will dominate over the other sources. In comparison, membership fees and legally recognized donations should constitute a marginal percentage of the party income.

When analysing the party funding in Slovakia, our reasoning is thus based on the theory of alienation that is based on the assumption of a gradual reduction in the membership of the political parties (Katz 1996, Beyme 2000). I. e. the political parties with the generous state funding are not motivated to create strong internal party structures with a wide membership which would balance the dominant importance of the state financial support by the membership fees. The membership base in getting of the electoral votes is replaced by the popularity of the leader which, however, naturally ends at some point, if the party has not built sufficient internal party mechanisms in order to solve this problem (for example, by means of the natural replacement of the leaders), the popularity of the party as a whole is declining, or the party as a whole ends. The short existence of political parties and frequent exchanges of political parties in the Parliament are a particular character of weakly institutionalized party systems.

When analysing party funding in Slovakia, our reasoning is thus based on the theory of alienation, which is based on the assumption of a gradual reduction in membership of political parties (Katz 1996, Beyme 2000). Political parties receiving generous state funding are not motivated to create strong internal party structures to treat a wide membership base, though these efforts would eventually balance out the dominant importance of the state's financial support with standardized membership fees. In recruiting electoral votes, the membership base is thereby replaced by the popularity of the party leader; in such scenarios, the party is destined to decrease at some point if it has not built sufficient internal party mechanisms to naturally replace these leaders or resolve similar crises. The popularity of the party as a whole would be doomed to decline, or would disband. The short stints of political parties and the frequent exchange of political parties in the Slovak Parliament aptly characterize the aforementioned weakly-institutionalized party systems. Some authors (Mendilow, Rusciano 2001) theorize that the introduction of state funding of political parties has no impact on the development of the number of members; a gradual decline of the party base was recorded long before the introduction of state funding. Koss (2008), for example, points out that a drastic decline in parties' membership bases has occurred since the 1960s in states (e.g. Great Britain, the Netherlands) which did not make use of state support for parties. The problem of Slovak political parties, however, lies in the fact that some parties, due to such generous financial support, do not even articulate any interest in the building of the organizational structure of the party (for example, SaS and Ol'aNO). The literature has also identified the weak formal organization of political parties in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe (Erdmann, Kollner, Betz 2004). We affirm this finding, and assert that is the state funding as a dominant source of income that creates this very situation.

The text is methodologically based on the content analysis of various types of documents immediately connected with the research subject (primarily, the annual reports of political parties). The chosen research approach is accepting the publication date as listed on the selected sources as valid despite any possible suspicion which may emerge from the existence of other, undocumented sources that parties obtain their means through some other channels. In other words, the object of research is "what is on paper." If something is not published by the political parties themselves, as a rule, these are unconfirmed speculations. Likewise, indications that greater attention should be paid to the field of the financing of political parties, not only by the researchers in the academic field of political science, but also on the part of criminal justice authorities, will not be explicitly treated here. It cannot be excluded that the parties are "improving" their final reports with the aim of avoiding suspicion of unfair political practices, so as to directly avoid the pertinent legal regulations. However, it does not call into question the assertion that inquiry into existing data, with particular respect to repeated and long-term comparison, provides a sufficient overview of the trends in revenues, and that the political parties' expenditures are important actors in ensuring democratic order.

The Weak Institutionalization of the Slovak Party System

According to the criteria for American political scientist Scott Mainwaring (1998) has established for describing the institutionalization of party systems, the Slovak party system may be included in the category of the weakly institutionalized party systems (Lid'ak 2005, Stefancfk 2014). Mainwaring defines institutionalization as the process by which "the procedures and organizations are established and become generally recognized or universally accepted" (Mainwaring 1998). In a well-institutionalized party system, political actors have a clear vision of the actions, expectations, and intentions of their competitors; the system is characterized by a high level of stability; there is a low level of volatility, the exchange of the political leaders is strongly limited, and the civil society considers the various political parties to be the important actors in the maintenance of the stability of the democratic order. A weakly institutionalized party system, in contrast, is more characteristic of democracies in the transitive period (although the party system may show signs of instability and weak anchorage in society in longer-term established democracies as well). This weakly institutionalized party system may manifest itself negatively in the populism of the party leaders, in the unreliability of political appearance, in the preference of the sectional and short-term interests as opposed to longer-term considerations, or in any of the other motions undertaken by these parties, including their formation, extinction, or merging, which subsequently enforce frequent changes of the political preferences among voters (Mainwaring 1998).

The weakly institutionalized Slovak party system can be seen in the frequent formation of new parties and extinction of previously established political parties. It also rears its head in the form of the very visible decay of political parties, which had been well-positioned and well-rooted in previous elections. Many parties split during these election periods themselves, further negatively impacting the stability of parliamentary groups. Despite the fact that some political parties were members of the ruling coalition, several parties remained in the parliament for only one election period (ZRS, SOP, ANO) (Table 1).

Table 1 shows only those political parties that had acquired their mandates during the designated election period. The non-affiliated members of Parliament representing the parties which had failed in the elections also served in Parliament in the individual election periods. A low number of members of the political parties, the high rate of voter fluctuation, the voter support to the parties without the open ambition to create the regional structures as well as the high rate of populism of the political leaders belong to another indicators of the weakly institutionalized party system, on the contrary, the sufficient and stable financial sources and the built vertical organizational structure of some relevant parties (Smer-SD, KDH) may be included in the strengths.

The Slovak Model of Political Party Funding

Scott Mainwaring (1998) mentions that the sufficient financial means are characteristic of well-institutionalized political parties. These funds should not be obtained from one source exclusively, but should be based on multi-source financing. Conversely, the weekly institutionalized political parties are especially dependent on financing from a single source: as a rule, from the government budget. If a party were to fail in the election, it would lose virtually all of its base funds as well as its primary means of generating new income.

This text assumes that Slovak political parties are weakly institutionalized in the case of their financing as well. That means that they are especially dependent on the sources from the government budget without the ambition to obtain the financial means from other sources as well. If we are to assume that the introduction of state funding for parties has sufficiently influenced the method of building party structures (van Biezen 2003), it ought to be expected that this development will not follow the pattern of parties in Western Europe for classic methods of building internal party organization, but, anchoring these parties to the government doll, will in fact further weaken parties and the democratic environment on the whole over time. To prove this hypothesis, it is necessary to analyse two types of party funding sourcing--both public subsidies and private funds.

Public Funding

Financing from public sources has been gaining ground in the second half of the 20th century in Western European countries as a direct reaction to various scandals connected with party funding...

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