By Veronica Anghel (University of Bucharest) Following yet another electoral fortune, the Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSD) successfully formed the Grindeanu cabinet with support party the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) in December 2016. As the first year in the life of the Grindeanu cabinet unfolded, there was little change in the distribution [...]
By Boban Stojanović (University of Belgrade) Serbia gets a new, fifth government since the 2012, when the Serbian Progressive Party came to power. After the election in 2012, we had twice early parliamentary elections, in 2014 on which Vučić had the goal to further increase his power and increase the number of MPs. With the [...]
By Nisida Gjoksi (London School of Economics) Background Albania broke-free from a 45 years long totalitarian communist regime in the 1990s. The road to democratization was strongly interlinked with the process of EU accession and the country received the candidate status in June 2014 and became a NATO member in 2009. Its path to democratization [...]
By Shqipe Mjekiqi (R.I.T Kosovo) Early parliamentary elections were held in Kosovo on 11th June, as the coalition between the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) broke out a month ago. Interestingly, this happened even though a parliamentary motion against the Government was raised by the PDK splinter party NISMA, [...]
By Grant Mitchell (Keele University) Introduction After weeks of declaring that there would be no general election until 2020, Theresa May surprised the nation by calling for a general election before 2020. Unlike in previous elections, the introduction of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (2011) removed from the Prime Minister the power to call snap elections [...]
By Roderick Pace (University of Malta) The snap election held in Malta on 3 June 2017 has reconfirmed the incumbent Labour Party in government for the next five years with a resounding popular majority and a projected nine seat majority in the National Parliament. Labour Leader Joseph Muscat took the oath of office as Prime [...]
By Trajche Panov (European University Institute, Florence) Macedonia got the first government after 11 years of political dominance of the conservative populist VMRO DPMNE (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity) led by its president and long term Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. This practically closes the era of Nikola Gruevski who created an [...]
By Camille Bedock (Centre for the Study of Politics-CEVIPOL at Free University of Brussels-ULB) Since the election of the new President Macron on the 7th of May, the French media seems quite unanimous: France is experiencing a soft revolution, with a young president breaking the lines, atomizing old parties and old cleavages, and sending home [...]
By Dragomir Stoyanov (VUZF University) On March 26, 2017 snap elections were held in Bulgaria. These were the third snap parliamentary elections in the last five years and their results confirmed GERB as the most popular party in Bulgaria. Thus, these were the fourth consecutive national elections in which GERB won parliamentary majority (very unusual [...]
By Emilia Zankina (American University in Bulgaria) Sunday (March 26th) parliamentary elections in Bulgaria mark the third early elections in the country in four years. Three elections and six governments (three of which care-taker) later, Boyko Borissov and his GERB party (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, with the symbolic acronym meaning “coat of arms”) [...]