engleski

Responsibility of Political Parties for Criminal Offences

The subject of this thesis are delinquent political parties and their liability. Case study is used as a source of empirical data to address the general research question: Do we need criminal liability of political parties? This thesis reveals the etiology of crime of political parties by bringing them in connection with the misbalance between two colliding interests: the duty to act for the welfare of the people vs. the will to power. The phenomenological study of criminal behaviour of political parties reveals that the most heinous crimes in the history of humanity had been largely committed by ruling political parties, undermining the dominant notion of ‘state crime’ as well as the efforts towards the criminal responsibility of states. This thesis established a categorization of crimes committed by political parties depending on whether they act: (a) in power or in opposition ; (b) in totalitarian, transitional or democratic settings ; and (c) in wartime or peacetime. This thesis provides insight into the historical roots of two main models of collective criminal liability – corporate and criminal organization model – discovering that they have originally been used to supress political opposition. The renessaince of collective criminal liability directly affects political parties, beginning with the neglected precedent from the Nuremberg trials, where bodies of the German Nazi Party had been convicted. This thesis introduces a special goal of criminal justice applicable to delinquent political parties: 'marginalizational shaming'. This theory suggests that delinquent political parties are too well integrated, which means that shaming should result in marginalization (instead of reintegration), because this is the only way to satisfy the general purposes of punishment.

collective liability ; corporate crime ; criminal enterprises ; criminal law and politics ; criminal organizations ; criminal responsibility of legal entities ; delinquent political parties ; dissolution of political parties ; freedom of political association ; organizational deviance ; political corruption ; political crime ; political extremism ; political trials ; regime crime ; shaming theory ; state crime ; state responsibility ; unconstitutional political parties

international dual doctorate