Responsive Regulation of Political Parties as a Model to Fight Political Corruption

There is hardly any democracy in the world in which a major political party has not engaged in a corrupt financing scheme. This way corrupt money impacts election results and undermines democracy. Thus, political party regulation is becoming the major challenge of contemporary democracies. The question is, however, which regulatory policy model to adopt? The effectiveness of responsive regulation has been empirically proven to be successful in a number of areas: business, occupational health and safety, tax policy, nursing home regulation etc. The highest instrument in the regulatory pyramid are typically criminal sanctions as last resort. They ensure the effectiveness of all other regulatory instruments. The inability to impose criminal sanctions on political parties in most democracies could be the reason why responsive regulation has not yet been considered as a model for political party regulation. While most countries have introduced corporate criminal liability, holding political parties responsible for crimes such as corruption is a somewhat neglected legal instrument. This regulatory gap opens the door for corruption. The aim of this paper is to analyse how the corruption trial against the major political party in Croatia - the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) - affected the party regulation in this country.