By Sophia Hunger and Theresa E. Gessler (European University Institute) In September 2017, Germans went to the polls - almost half a year later, Angela Merkel was elected as chancellor governing with another round of the previous grand coalition government. In this post, we discuss how this new-old government came about, why coalition formation took [...]
By Vincenzo Emanuele (Luiss Guido Carli) and Bruno Marino (Scuola Normale Superiore) A new electoral tsunami has hit Italy in the 2018 general election, after the already-astonishing results of the previous general election. As highly expected by many pundits, the election held on the 4th March has ended up in a hung Parliament, with no [...]
By Félicitas Guillot (IE-EI, Nice) Monegasque national elections took place on the 11th of February. The election campaign started quite early, in July 2017, with the announcement of Jean-Louis Grinda as chief candidate for « l’Union Monegasque » (Monegasque Union, center). The second chief candidate was Béatrice Fresko-Rolfo for Horizon Monaco (center-right), declared in September [...]
By Vasiliki Triga (Cyprus University of Technology) On 4 February 2018, the 8th President of the Republic of Cyprus, the incumbent President Anastasiades, was elected for a new term after winning the second round run-off with 55.9% of the vote. In the first round (28 January) President Anastasiades received 35.1% of the vote share against [...]
By Veronica Anghel (University of Bucharest) The durability of a cabinet is the standard indicator used by researchers of governments to measure stability. Non-specialists intuitively make the same choice. Now counting its 30th cabinet of the last 28 years, Romania reconfirms its traditional pattern of cabinet instability. However, the case also shows the limitations of [...]
By Seán Hanley (University College London) On 13 December, Czech President Miloš Zeman formally appointed a minority government led by the billionaire-politician Andrej Babiš, whose ANO movement emerged as the clear winner of parliamentary elections on 20-21 October, gaining 78 seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies. The October elections saw no fewer than nine [...]
By Eva H. Önnudóttir (University of Iceland) and Ólafur Th. Hardarson (University of Iceland) An early election to Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, took place on October 28th 2017 – only a year after another early election in the fall 2016, and the third early election since 2008. In September 2017, Bright Future, which was first [...]
By Ólafur Th. Hardarson (University of Iceland) An Althingi election in Iceland took place on October 28th 2017 – only a year after the 2016 election. In September, Bright Future decided to leave their government coalition with the conservative Independence Party, and the new right-of-centre Reform Party. Bright Future claimed that a serious breach of [...]
By Vlastimil Havlik (Masaryk University) and Tim Haughton (University of Birmingham) Two initial observations stand out with the first glance at results of the last parliamentary election that took place in the Czech Republic last week. First, confirmation of stability instability dating back to the 2010 “earthquake election”. Second, a clear victory of an anti-establishment [...]
By Simon Otjes (University of Groningen) The Dutch elections were on March 15, 2017. 225 days, later a government was formed. That was the longest government formation period in the Netherlands. So why did the talks last so long? What did the talks result in? And will the coalition last? Longest Formation Talks in Dutch [...]