Politinių partijų teisinio statuso raida Lietuvoje 1918-1940 m.

Abstract

A modern democratic State cannot imagine itself without parties, with which the idea of representation and its practice in society are deeply connected. The legal regulation of parties and the knowledge of its evolution are problems constantly relevant not only because the democracy itself requires a specific legal status of parties, but also because it defines its characteristics. In this thesis, the parties are analysed in the terms of the history of law, in order to reveal their legal status in the context of the development of Lithuania in the “1918–1940” period, as well as to discuss – from the “pre-history” of parties to Lithuanian independence in 1918 – the differences between Lithuanian political movements and political parties and the reasons for which parties were losing public confidence, the democracy which they were establishing has started to lose popularity inside Lithuanian society and the coup of 1926 has significantly limited the activity of parties and their pluralism, so that the structure of the regime of the State has turned into authoritarianism. In 1940 the regime of occupation of Soviet Union has forbidden all parties except the communist one, in a way that not only has interrupted the development of the democratic regulation of the activity of parties, but also has altered their authentic nature. The historical analysis of political life of Lithuania in 1918–1940 take to the conclusion according towhich, even if at the birth of democratic state parties began to raise as interest groups above the public, they – and the representative democracy based on them – have been subjected to crisis of confidence, which, in that time in Lithuania, has ended with the Coup d’Etat of 1926.