Jacques CHEVALLIER - Professor (université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas)
Marie-Anne COHENDET - Professor (université Paris 1)
Marie-Joëlle REDOR - Professor (université de Caen)
Pierre AVRIL - Professor (université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas)
Yves POIRMEUR - Professor (université UVSQ)
The study of the nature of partisan juridical order leads to affirm that a political party constitutes a juridical order. To do so, one must first establish that the internal rules of parties meet the criteria established by existing doctrine to decide that the threshold for lawfulness has been met ; and then, within the perspective of juridical pluralism and based on the theory of institutions, one must demonstrate that a political party, as an institution, is a juridical order. Such a finding implies the need to study the party's relationship to the state, in both its regula tion and its control, so as to be able to measure its autonomy. The partisan juridical order is not only a specific juridical order; it is also a flexible juridical order, which is open to the society around it and within which the law is made instrumental . The porosity to its environment of the partisan juridical order results in its conforming to the institutional context in which it operates, but also in its adaptability to the evolution of the social context within which it fits. Within the party, the law is used to justify political strategies and a number of rules are bypassed or even never applied. As to disciplinary law, it is applied according to circumstances, and motivated by considerations of political opportunity or as a result of the internal balance of power within the party, which make it a negotiated law.