Having won Slovenia’s elections, political newcomer Miro Cerar will have to make tough decisions if he is to bring stability to a new government

Slovenia held parliamentary elections on 13 July. Alenka Krašovec and Tim Haughton assess the results of the election, which saw a newly formed party led by Miro Cerar win the largest share of the vote. They write that the key challenge for Cerar will be to retain his new party’s appeal while making the tough decisions necessary to solve the country’s economic problems

Post-Yugoslav Region between Democratisation and Europeanisation of Party Politics: Experiences from Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina

The main aim of this article is to discuss the potential interlocking of democratization and Europeanization processes in party politics in Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the two “extremes” in former Yugoslavia. While Slovenia has already gained full membership of the EU and has experienced the Europeanization processes in various aspects of the political system and public policies, Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the status of “potential candidate state for EU accession”, is still facing deep challenges related to the processes of Europeanization. While Slovenia has already gone through the five steps of Europeanization processes, Bosnia-Herzegovina is still stuck at the first step. Although at the very first stage Bosnia-Herzegovina followed the Slovenian pattern of Europeanization of party politics that includes establishing incremental formal links between national political parties and European party federations, further Europeanization processes in Bosnia-Herzegovina above all demand a democratically consolidated party arena, that for political parties would not lead to pressure to adapt themselves in order to mobilize their voters along ethnic lines. All in all, the conducted analysis revealed the two investigated countries are very different for making direct comparisons; nonetheless there was a common Yugoslav tradition in the past. Bosnia-Herzegovina is a unique European state, due to its mixed ethnic structure and strong ethnic cleavages, and thus we cannot expect a Slovenian and consequently a Central and Eastern European pattern of Europeanization processes, in Bosnian party politics

Europeanisation of the Slovenian party system – from marginal European impacts to the domestification of EU policy issues?

While more general research findings on the impact of European integration on party system competition in post-socialist EU countries remain inconclusive, some studies have shown direct interdependence between the deepening of democratisation and its Europeanisation. Whereas in successfully democratising new EU members EU pressure to satisfy the political criteria did not create deep tensions between intergovernmental and domestic levels, this was not the case in Slovakia. Based on Slovakian experiences and taking the unfinished process of EU enlargement into account, the authors suggest: a) a theoretical model encompassing a two-level game; and b) a greater variety of research units (allowing a bigger variety of national political characteristics as well as EU-impacts) to be included in further research efforts. The model was tested on Slovenia. While in Slovenia (like most recent post-socialist EU member states) the EU’s relatively weak impact on political parties and party competition could be observed in the accession period, full EU membership has created greater space for EU-policy related cleavages on the basis of the domestic pattern of party system competition (left-right, government-opposition parties)

Etablirana privlačnost novoga: slovenski parlamentarni izbori 2018. godine

Ovogodišnji slovenski izbori nisu samo naglasili privlačnost stranaka koje obećavaju novu politiku, već i snagu osobnosti, učinkovitost protuimigrantske retorike te važnost vođenja predizborne kampanje

Privlačnost novog: nove stranke i promjena stranačkog sustava u Sloveniji

Slovenski stranački sustav dugo je slovio kao jedan od dosadnih, stabilnih stranačkih sustava u srednjoj i istočnoj Europi

Vývoj a charakteristiky koaličních dohod ve Slovinsku

Composition and duration of governmental coalitions are the most frequent research topics within the fi eld of coalitions, while more detailed researches of characteristics of coalition agreements as well as their signifi cance for coalition governance are usually overlooked. The article presents development and characteristics of coalition agreements in Slovenia. As comparative analysis have showed there are three main topics covered by coalition agreements, policies, portfolio allocation, and ways of prevention or resolution of potential confl icts. It last several decades there has been clear tendency toward greater emphasis on policies in coalition agreements. The case study of Slovenia fi rst presents characteristics of Slovenian governments. Further, it reveals that coalition agreements are actually a norm in Slovenian politics. Analysis of all post-electoral coalition agreements shows that all above-mentioned three main topics have been also included in Slovenian coalition agreements in the period 1993–2008 with the same tendency of greater importance of policies within time perspective