RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICAL PARTIES AND CHURCHES AS ACTORS OF PUBLIC POLICY IN SLOVAKIA

The political changes of 1989 affected almost all areas of social life in a decisive manner. In the conditions of religiously based Slovakia, religious freedom is objectively considered one of the key achievements of the velvet revolution. In the process of democratization, the subordination of churches and religious societies to the state was removed, thus creating a new quality of relations. So far, however, there has been no separation of state and churches in terms of their funding, which is the subject of public discussion in the long run. Political parties are key actors in the whole process, as they have the political power to bring about concrete changes. In this article, we focus on the relationship between political parties and churches from several perspectives. On the one hand, we evaluate the role of specific political entities in the process of democratization of society, on the other hand, we analyse the current views of parliamentary political parties on the issue of church financing and general separation. Based on the evaluation of the issue in the countries of the Visegrad Group, we identify various models as example for Slovakia. At the same time, we rely on the conducted interviews with representatives of selected political parties, whom we addressed to maximize the outputs of this paper.