Some issues regarding Slovakia‘s party system development from the perspective of legal regulation

Stability of party system is one of the key factors of successful transformation in post-Commu¬nist countries. The legal and institutional framework of party system, providing the competitive and pluralist character of the political life, is extremely important for further democratic devel¬opment. In Slovakia, the issue of legal regulation of party system became politically relevant during the Vladimír Meciar‘s government. In May 1998, few months before elections the authoritarian ruling coalition of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, Association of Workers of Slovakia and the Slovak National Party approved an amendment to the election law. The amendment dramatically changed electoral rules for coalitions. In order to diminish the destructive effect of the anti-coalition amendment two pre-electoral opposition coalitions - Slovak Demo¬cratic Coalition and Hungarian Coalition - had to change their organizational status and two new parties appeared. After elections 1998, the proposal to change the legal regulation of party system by amending the law on political parties was suggested by some politicians. In fact it was the indirect consequence of the previous nonconsensual change of electoral rules. The question of the financing of political parties became in Slovakia the topic of public debate in 1999 due to evidently obsolete legal provisions that cannot provide the proper conditions for transparency in political life. New regulation of the party financing, properly combining different sources (public and private) would contribute to the maintenance of ing the free and fair political competition and to the improvement of the professional level of party apparatus.