By Martin Mölder (University of Tartu) The Estonian parliamentary elections that ended on Sunday can be considered both exceptional or rather commonplace, depending on how one looks at the results. The same could be said about possible coalitions that can form in the aftermath. The elections were exceptional first and foremost because of the very [...]
By Vladislav Șaran (Independent Analytical Center “Spirit Critic”) On 24 February, citizens of the Republic of Moldova were invited to express their right to vote having a choice between the old political class and new politicians. Looking at the results, the new Parliament will have 4 political parties: namely, the Socialist Party (PSRM) (35 mandates), [...]
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, [...]