One of the significant innovations introduced in 2019 in the Republic of North Macedonia is the transformation of political parties into public information holders in terms of their revenues and expenditures. In order to measure their active transparency, a so-called “Transparency Index of Political Parties” was created, which measures how much the parties in North Macedonia proactively, independently and regularly publish information about their work on their own websites.
In the period from November 1 to December 20, 2021, the websites of all 20 political parties that are part of the parliamentary composition from 2020 to 2024, as well as 8 non-parliamentary parties were monitored. Out of a total of 28 political parties included in the survey sample, 23 functional websites are subject to analysis by individual indicators.
The Transparency Index of political parties contains 33 questions, with a total of 120 points. For the analytical needs of the index, 5 degrees of transparency of the parties have been developed:
- Excellent active transparency – 120 – 97 points;
- Very good active transparency – 96 – 73 points;
- Good active transparency – 72 – 49 points;
- Satisfactory active transparency – 48 – 25 points;
- Unsatisfactory active transparency – 24 – 0 points.
According to the results obtained from the Transparency Index, we can conclude that almost 43% of the parties (12) included in the sample, scored between 24 and 0 points, and thus fall into the last category of parties with “unsatisfactory active transparency”. Five of these parties do not have functional websites and thus have not received any points at all. Almost 46% (13) of the analyzed political parties scored between 48 and 25 points, which places them in the category of parties with “satisfactory active transparency”. Only 10% (3) of the monitored political parties scored between 72 and 49 points, thus entering the category of parties with “good active transparency”.
The public policy document is available in Macedonian and Albanian.
This policy paper was prepared by the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia (FOSM) for the International Republican Institute (IRI) under the program “Promoting Financial Transparency of Political Parties in the Republic of North Macedonia” with financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy from the United States of America (USA).
FOSM is responsible for the content and in no way reflects the positions of the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Endowment for Democracy.
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27 May 2022