By Kjetil Duvold (Dalarna University) Sweden’s former Prime Minister Olof Palme once said that ‘politics is to want something’. For many people, Palme epitomised the classic Swedish welfare model of long-term and comprehensive social and economic planning, agreement between labour and capital, and a great deal of social consensus. But his assassination on a cold [...]
By Alenka Krašovec (University of Ljubljana) Introduction A bit more than three months after the elections in June 2018, a new government in Slovenia was formed on 13 September 2018. Given the PR electoral system and rather low parliamentary threshold (4 %), another coalition government in Slovenia was not a surprise. However, some novelty can [...]
By Armen Mazmanyan (Central European University and American University of Armenia) Background On 9 December 2018 the citizens of the Republic of Armenia went to the polls to elect the country’s new parliament, and these were the second such elections in the last two years. The outgoing parliament, featuring an overwhelming majority by the ruling [...]
By George Mchedlishvili (International Black Sea University) For the first time in its post-Soviet history of independence, the second round of presidential election took place in Georgia on November 28. The runoff gave a commanding victory (at 59.5% of the votes) to the former foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili, a formally independent candidate supported by the [...]
By Ryo Nakai (The University of Kitakyushu) Latvia had a general election on 6 October 2018. The results awarded seats in the Saeima, the parliament of the Republic of Latvia, to seven parties including three newcomers. Some notable aspects of the election include the following: the current government parties were defeated, a party friendly to [...]
By Thomas Sedelius (Dalarna University) The polling stations closed on Sunday, 9 September, at 8pm as Sweden voted on all available parliamentary positions on the same day: the 291 municipal councils (Kommunerna), the 23 provincial chambers (Landstingen) and the 349 seats in the national parliament, the Riksdag. Here is my brief post-election comment focusing on [...]
By Vlastimil Havlik (Masaryk University) and Ivan Jarabinský (Institute for Evaluations and Social Analyses) Initial situation It was 263 days after the last general election that a new minority coalition government was formed. The populist ANO and the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) came together and the coalition is - for the first time after [...]
By Gianluca Scattu (The University of Sydney) Many words have been spoken, and probably much more will be said about the three months of political chaos that followed March 2018 general elections, and the populist traits of the Five Star Movement (FSM) and the League, the two parties that support the new government. Little, however, [...]
By Margherita de Candia (King's College London) As it is often the case, Italian politics turns out to be particularly absorbing. More than two months have elapsed since March general elections, and Italy's main parties have yet to agree on the coalition that will lead the country's 65th government (according to some, the first of [...]
By Marek Rybář (Masaryk University) One of the most turbulent months in Slovakia's recent history started with the murder of an investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and culminated with the resignation of the Prime Minister Robert Fico and his entire cabinet, and appointment of a new government led by Peter Pellegrini. The whole process involved an [...]