Prime ministers and party governments in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

This article is the introduction to a special issue on Prime Ministers (PMs) and party governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It argues that the political survival of PMs in post-communist democracies depends on their interrelationships with other actors in three different arenas. The first arena encompasses the linkages between PMs and their parties. In this respect, being a party leader is a major power resource for PMs to retain their office even under critical circumstances. At the heart of the second arena is the PMs’ relationship to other parliamentary parties. In this regard, the high fragmentation and fluidity of many post-communist party systems pose enormous challenges for PMs to secure constant parliamentary support. In the third arena, PMs are confronted with state presidents. Relatively strong CEE presidents, especially in semi-presidential systems, may use their constitutional powers to interfere in the political domain of PMs and thus jeopardise the stability of party governments. For each of these interrelationships, the article provides systematic evidence for eleven CEE democracies from 1990 to 2019 and situates the findings of the volume’s contributions within a broader comparative perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Prime ministers
• party governments
• state presidents
• post-communist context

Acknowledgements

We would especially like to thank Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, the anonymous reviewer and the participants of a workshop held at the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg on 18–20 September 2019 on which first drafts of the papers included in this Special Issue were discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For example, Grotz and Weber (2017) find that PMs are less likely to be party leaders in replacement cabinets, compared to post-electoral cabinets.

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the generous funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Grants GR3311/3-1 and MU618/18-1).

Notes on contributors

Florian Grotz

Florian Grotz is Professor of Comparative Government at the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany. His research focuses on political institutions and party governments in European democracies.

Marko Kukec

Marko Kukec is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany. His research focuses on legislative politics, political parties and politics in Central and Eastern Europe.