Third Party in Election Campaign in Slovakia. Legal regulation and its practical application

Abstract

Despite the fact that political parties and individual candidates are the most important participants of an election campaign, also so-called third parties, entities that do not run for elected seats themselves, often participate. The participation of third parties, participating in favor of a political party or a candidate, also have been expressly envisaged by the law in Slovakia, albeit only from 2014 to 2019. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate this relatively short application of legally 40 formalized third parties of election campaign. The paper focuses not only on their legislative regulation, but also on the practical application of this legislative regulation during the reporting period. A critical evaluation of the abolition of the third party legal regulation in July
2019 and possible development of the exercise of election campaign by third parties without their specific legal regulation are also included.