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15 Election L.J. 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/enlwjr15 and id is 1 raw text is: The Legal Regulation of Political Parties: Promoting Integrity? Anika Gauja P OLITICAL PARTIES HAVE LONG BEEN acknowl- edged as a fundamental building block of mod- ern representative democracy. The core functions that political parties are said to perform-namely governing, providing a means of political recruit- ment, articulating and aggregating policy interests, facilitating political engagement, and finally, com- municating with and educating electors-influence all aspects of the electoral contest-before, during, and after polling day. The performance of these functions has much to do with the organizational structure of parties (for exam- ple, how candidates are selected, how the party is resourced, and how internal decision making is prac- ticed). Yet, while political parties-through the stra- tegic and organizational decisions they make-are able to shape the character of democracy, these choices are in turn constrained by the laws that regu- late the behavior of parties as electoral actors. The last decade has seen a rapid expansion in po- litical science scholarship concerned with charting the character and consequences of party law, with numerous studies examining the trend towards in- creased legal regulation and the implications for par- ties' relationship with the state (particularly in the realm of campaign finance). This literature has com- plemented the longer-standing concern of law, party, and elections scholars as to the partisan consequences of electoral laws, as well as the politics of electoral law reform. Comparative and single-jurisdiction studies to date have made excellent inroads into doc- umenting the diversity and scope of party laws in ex- istence; however, relatively few of these studies have examined party laws in their broader normative con- Anika Gauja is a senior lecturer in the Department of Govern- ment and International Relations at the University of Sydney in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. text: either as a product of, or a means to achieve, par- ticular democratic outcomes. Together, the articles in this symposium strive to draw deeper connections (through both theoretical and empirical approaches) between the intentions, the substance, and the effect of party laws, build- ing on the concept of electoral integrity as an overarching heuristic device (Norris 2014; 2013). Grounded in international commitments and global norms, electoral integrity can be defined as the universal standards that apply to all countries worldwide throughout the electoral cycle, including during the pre-electoral period, the campaign, on polling day, and in its aftermath (Norris 2014: 9). A prominent example is the requirement set out in Article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which provides that: the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in peri- odic and genuine elections which shall be by univer- sal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures (see also Davis-Roberts and Carroll 2014: 21-24). While the concept lends itself to the evaluation of a multi-stage electoral process (see Norris 2014: 34), the authors in this symposium have been asked to focus specifically on how these norms of regulation affect the operation of political parties in a diverse range of democratic settings (for exam- ple, as voluntary associations, as electoral competi- tors, and as legislative groupings) and across their various functions. Contributors consider parties not only as the subject of laws, but as active partic- ipants in their creation and maintenance. In doing so, the concept of electoral integrity is not treated uncritically: contributions to the volume interrogate not only the content, but also the universality and fluidity of many of these norms, as well as the boundaries of the electoral cycle. 1 ELECTION LAW JOURNAL Volume 15, Number 1, 2016 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/elj.2015.0354 Introduction

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