About
The researcher - Fransje Molenaar
Fransje Molenaar is a PhD candidate with the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Prior to entering the PhD trajectory, she studied Political Science at Leiden University and Latin American Studies at the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Education and Documentation of Latin America (CEDLA). In 2015, the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) appointed her as one of their prestigious Faces of Science. Her work has appeared in West European Politics and the International Political Science Review. She has worked as an independent political (finance) consultant with international organizations such as International IDEA, IFES, Global Integrity, and the NIMD. Fransje is currently employed as a research fellow 'politics and crime' at the Conflict Research Unit of the Clingendael Institute.
The research project - Designing the Rules of the Game: The Development and Reform of Party Law in Latin America
This webpage has been developed as a web-appendix to Fransje Molenaar's PhD dissertation on Latin American party law. This dissertation focuses on the norms regulating political parties in Latin American administrative and constitutional laws that have been developed since the region’s transition to democracy. She is particularly interested in whether or not these trends reflect shifting normative conceptions of party democracy held by political elites and society at large. A comparative longitudinal analysis of the design of party law identifies the trends in Latin American party law. Through case studies of several reform processes, Molenaar shows that different motivations for reform not only lead to different types of legal change, but that these motivations also determine the extent to which laws are designed to matter in practice.
The inspiration - Party Law in Modern Europe
Fransje Molenaar's research project has been inspired by, and builds on, Prof. Dr. I.C. van Biezen's work on the constitutional regulation of political parties in Post-War Europe and the legal regulation of contemporary European political parties more generally. More information about this research can be found at the Party Law in Modern Europe website. This site is the portal for research on the legal regulation of political parties in post-war European democracies. It contains a searchable database of party laws, as well as information, news, and publications associated with research projects on The C
onstitutional Regulation of Political Parties in Post-War Europe and Re-conceptualizing Party Democracy.