Party regulation in Lithuania: balancing between the efforts of consolidation and anti-party sentiment

Lithuanian party system is one of the most unstable systems in the post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. Since the 2000 parliamentary elections it is in a constant state of flux. While there have been numerous attempts to stabilize the system through the means of legal party regulation, these efforts are counterbalanced by initiatives stemming from the anti-party sentiment widespread in the Lithuanian population as well as in the elite. The paper explores the development of party regulation in Lithuania embodied in the Constitution, the Law on Political Parties, the Law on Funding of and Control over Funding of, Political Parties and Political Campaigns, the rulings of the Constitutional Court defining the place of political parties in the political system, and other related bodies of law. The paper also traces the changes in the amount of public party funding. The purpose of the paper is to explain why the efforts of the stabilization of the party system in Lithuania so far have been unsuccessful, revealing uneven and contradictory trends of party regulation.