Expert on the legal regulation of parties appointed to international advisory body

Nicole Bolleyer, Professor of Comparative Politics, who currently runs a large ERC-funded project on civil society regulation, has been appointed for a four-year term to the Core Group of Experts on Political Parties of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) belonging to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

This international group of senior experts was created in 2011 as part of the process of preparing the Venice Commission Guidelines on Political Party Regulation. It consists of 12 leading experts on political party regulation and acts as an advisory and consultative body to assist OSCE member states in developing and maintaining legislation on political parties that is in line with key international standards and OSCE commitments. This includes reviewing legislative drafts or enacted party legislation of participating states.

The group is further involved in revising the Guidelines on Political Party Regulation, which presents an overview of good practices from across the OSCE region. The guidelines support the drafting of legislation and regulation on political parties and can be useful for a broad range of policy makers, civil society actors and academics.

A central concern of the Core Group of Experts is the implementation of key international standards and OSCE commitments. In the Copenhagen Document of 1990, participating states committed to “respect the right of individuals and groups to establish, in full freedom, their own political parties or other political organizations and provide such political parties and organizations with the necessary legal guarantees to enable them to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law and by the authorities.”

Prof Bolleyer said “It is a great privilege to serve on the Core Group of Experts. It is doing important work in providing international guidance on how to best regulate political parties, core actors in any democratic system. “

“A key task for the Core Group is providing advice on how to design legal provisions that effectively balance the protection of parties from state intrusion with incentives to parties to act in ways that motivate democratic practices.”