By Martin Lausegger (University of Oxford) On the 15th of October Sebastian Kurz, leader of the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP), celebrated a clear ‘start to finish’ victory. Ever since the 31-year old took over the ÖVP earlier this year, he consistently led the polls throughout an election campaign whose fundamental driving forces were immigration, the [...]
By Shqipe Mjekiqi (R.I.T Kosovo) The new Government of Kosovo under Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was constituted on September 9th; nearly three months after parliamentary elections took place on June 11th. Although the Government took less time to form than it did following the elections of 2014, the reasons for the delay were pretty much [...]
By Sophie Karow (University of Düsseldorf) Germany just voted for a new national parliament. The election results are regarded as historical. After 4 years of a grand coalition, the Conservatives (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), the two largest parties in Germany, face dramatic losses. The smaller parties are considered as winners of this election, [...]
By Jo Saglie (Institute for Social Research, Oslo) Incumbent parties tend to lose votes, in Norway as in many other West European countries. Nevertheless, the incumbent Norwegian government survived the 2017 parliamentary election. The government parties – the Conservative Party and the Progress Party – lost some seats, but remained in power. The main loser [...]
By Gorana Mišić (Central European University) It is old news that the first coalition between HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) and MOST (Bridge of Independent Lists) fell apart over the conflict of interest of the first deputy PM and HDZ President Tomislav Karamarko in June 2016 – after only six months in power. New elections in [...]
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 [...]