¹ Indeed, Schattschneider's oft-cited observation that ‘the political parties created democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the political parties’ has become a conventional wisdom among party scholars. See Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1942)Google Scholar, p. 1.

² Including the Lisbon Treaty, which places political parties prominently in Part II (Provisions on Democratic Principles), stipulating that ‘Political parties at European level contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of citizens of the Union.’ (art. 8 A.4)

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²⁰ Other (organic) laws which might have constitutional status have thus been excluded.

²¹ One might, for example, disagree with King's conclusion that the extension of the franchise to women in the United Kingdom, desirable and fundamental as the change may have been, was not a constitutional change because ‘[t]he character of the relations between governors and governed … remained substantially unaltered.’ See King, Anthony, Does the United Kingdom Still Have a Constitution? (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2001)Google Scholar, p. 2.

²² The current Swedish constitution consists of four fundamental laws; parties are included in ‘The Instrument of Government’. On the 1974 constitution, see Ruin, Olof, ‘Sweden: The New Constitution (1974) and the Tradition of Consensual Politics’, in Vernon Bogdanor, ed., Constitutions in Democratic Politics (Aldershot, Surrey: Gower, 1988), pp. 309–327Google Scholar.

²³ The new integrated Finnish constitution of 1999 is based on four older constitutional acts (the Constitution Act, the Parliament Act and two acts on ministerial liability). The Parliament Act has included a reference to political parties since 1991.

²⁴ For the purpose of this research, ‘democracy’ has been operationalized as a country classified as ‘Free’ by the Freedom House at the end of 2007, with the exception of small states with a population under 100,000.

²⁵ More detailed information on the coding of the constitutions can be found in the Appendix. A catalogue of all cases of post-war European party constitutionalization, including subsequent amendments, is available online in a searchable database at www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl. This database also contains details of party regulation through party laws and party finance laws.

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²⁸ This in contrast with the Provisional Constitution (Vorläufige Verfassung) adopted on 1 May 1945, where, in line with their leading role in the reconstruction of the Second Republic, parties were given a much more prominent position. This document, however, was suspended when the current constitution was reinstated. See Hans-Wolfram Wilde, ‘Die Politischen Parteien im Verfassungssystem Österreichs’ (doctoral dissertation, Kiel, 1984).

²⁹ Daalder, Hans, ‘Parties: Denied, Dismissed or Redundant? A Critique’, in Richard Gunther, José Ramón Montero and Juan J. Linz, eds, Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 41.

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³³ Dimitris Th. Tsatsos, ed., 30 Jahre Parteiengesetz in Deutschland: Die Parteiinstitutionen im Internationalen Vergleich (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002).

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³⁵ The first sentence of article 6 of the Spanish constitution reads: ‘Political parties are the expression of political pluralism, they contribute to the formation and expression of the will of the people and are an essential instrument for political participation.’

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