Introduction

As has been exposed by many political scientists, all political parties must develop their organization, whether they want to thrive actively or simply survive in the long-term. The dual aim of this article is to present the organizational structures of Slovenian parties, and to reveal and explain any differences between them. Parties can be distinguished in terms of their age, size, model of development, and ideological position. All these characteristics will be used to analyze how Slovenian parties differ in their organizational structures.

This article is based on analysis of formal documents (party statutes). In this study, we restrict ourselves to an investigation only of current parliamentary parties in Slovenia. The article is organized into several sections, the first of which deals with the development and regulation of parties, followed by a presentation of the main characteristics of the Slovenian party system and its parties. The last two sections present characteristics of organizational structures in parties, as well as intra-party processes.

Development and Regulation of Parties

By the 1890s, party life in Slovenia was already well-developed, with three parties representing the main political orientations: conservative; liberal; and social democratic. This initial period of party development was followed by the development of parties except for the League of Communists were prohibited.

In 1991, Slovenia adopted a new Constitution. Although the Constitution, like in many other countries, acknowledges the existence of political parties (van Biezen and Borz 2012), these are mentioned only a few times, mainly in the form of a prohibition – for example, professionals in the Slovenian Army as well as police officers are not allowed to be members of political parties. Likewise, the function of a judge is incompatible with membership in party bodies (Lukšič 1994). On the other hand, as a rule, party laws to a greater extent regulate parties, including their operation and functioning (van Biezen and Piccio 2013).

In fact, a previous law dealing with political parties was adopted in Slovenia in December 1989. Although this was a short document with only 27 articles, it mentioned several of the more common areas of party regulation (Karvonen 2007).