Simona Kustec Lipicer

National law, domestic governance and global policy: a case study of anti-doping policy in Slovenia.

This article examines the impact of global anti-doping initiatives on national sport policies and the role of wider national political and legal frameworks in facilitating compliance with them. The role of these frameworks in respect of ‘top-down’ sports policy scenarios – where sovereign states, sports organizations and individual actors respond to the policy obligations placed upon them by virtue of their acceding to international initiatives such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code or the UNESCO Anti-Doping Convention – is considered by reference to the ongoing development of anti-doping policy within the Republic of Slovenia. This article identifies various patterns of policy change which have occurred in the national context as a consequence of global policy initiatives and thus examines the relationship between a sovereign state’s particular response to global policies, the ostensibly binding nature of those policies and the role of national law in the relationship between them.

The European Union and Party Politics in Slovenia: An Apparent or Real Impact?

This account deals with the characteristics of and developments in the party system of Slovenia, applying to them Ladrech’s (2002) perspectives on the possible impacts of Europeanization processes on national party politics. It directs attention to the accession referendum in 2003 and three national elections — two national parliamentary elections (2000 and 2004) and the first elections to the European Parliament in 2004. In the Slovenian case there are some reasons to believe that the EU has had some impact on the nature of party politics, especially at the end of the 1990s when certain (more or less symbolic) questions arose in the process of negotiating for full EU membership. There is also evidence that the EU is gradually and increasingly exerting an influence on domestic policy issues and national actors.

Evolution of manifestos in a developing parliamentary democracy with proportional representation and multiparty coalition governments

In exploring the first two decades of evolution of political programmes applied for the electoral processes in Slovenia, a young European multiparty parliamentary democracy with a proportional electoral system and multiparty government coalitions, the article contributes to a rich tradition of studying the programmes of political parties as relevant narrators of the development of democratic systems and suggests an answer to ‘why do parties write manifestos?’ The main findings include the distinct issue emphasis of parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties’ manifestos and convergence in issue emphasis over time among parliamentary parties who go on to form coalition governments. Regarding the ‘why’, these and other findings indicate that the manifestos considered here are intended more for post-election purposes – in particular, for the formation of alliances and negotiating and running a coalition government – than for attracting voters in the pre-election period. Party programmes are seen more as self-intended tools for political struggle than as promoters or control mechanisms for the further development of the democratic political system.

Sport Clubs in Slovenia

Slovenia has a population of two million. With the changes of political system (1991), significant changes in commercialisation and the partnership between state and private capital occurred also in the area of financing of sport. Today, sports organisations at all levels are financed from public and private funds.

An Analysis of Winning Campaigns in Urban Municipalities in 2006 Local Elections

The study of electoral campaigns is nowadays one of the very topical and popular themes in the field of the scientific-research work. Electoral campaigns can be defined in several ways and from several points of view. In this paper, a campaign is understood as a set of diverse activities performed to influence the electoral result. These activities can be studied according to the political-system, time-space, organisational and instrumental dimensions of their performance. The key purpose of the paper is to analyse and typologise the features of electoral campaigns of todays urban municipality mayors in Slovenia during their standing as candidates in local elections in 2006. By using various methodological and statistical approaches and tools, it was found out in the analysed cases that electoral campaigns were an important part of the electoral process and that, according to planning features and implementing plans, they were very specific in all the studied municipalities. Because of this, the campaigns in the studied elections were characterised as particular and highly localised. Despite these particularities, four different types of campaigns were highlighted according to the groups of similar features: a) traditional campaigns; b) charismatic candidate campaigns; c) modern local campaigns and d) an intense campaign mosaic. Regardless of the particularities of the campaign activities and processes, it turned out that they played an important role at the local level of political activity. Key words: • electoral campaign • local elections • urban municipality • mayor • type • Slovenia